The CIA Doctors

by Colin A. Ross, M. D.

  On June 3, 1973 John Nebel suggested to Candy that he should try to treat her chronic insomnia with hypnosis. He was not qualified as a hypnotist or psychotherapist. His efforts were successful, though, with a large reduction in Candy’s sleeplessness. During one of the hypnosis sessions, Candy spontaneously regressed to childhood, a common occurrence during hypnosis, and relived events from childhood. During subsequent sessions, under hypnosis, Candy spoke from a persona identified as Doll, while age regressed back to age eleven. Such age regression can occur in good hypnotic subjects who do not have a dissociative disorder, and is not by itself evidence of multiple personality disorder.

  During the hypnotic work, Nebel was gradually introduced to the various club members, whom he thought were imaginary friends reactivated in the trance state. When Candy described visiting Dr. Jensen in California as part of her CIA work, Nebel took little interest in this at first. He was not looking for or expecting anything like the mind control story that would unfold. One day in June, Arlene spontaneously took executive control during hypnosis, and spoke to Nebel for a lengthy period of time. Once Nebel had met Arlene, and knew her by name, the story of her mind control came to the surface.

  Long John Nebel sought consultation with Dr. Herbert Spiegel, who confirmed that Candy was highly hypnotizable. Dr. Spiegel295 does not state in his Foreword to The Control of Candy Jones that he believes in the reality of the mind control, nor does he state that he disbelieves it. That is the correct position to take on the matter, because the reality of the story can be confirmed only by independent documentation and evidence, and disproving it was beyond the resources or role of Dr. Spiegel.

  The mind control part of the tale begins across the hall from 808 - 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, in the office rented by Gene Tunney One night when Candy was working late, at about 7:30 P.M., she observed a middle-aged woman trying a series of keys on Tunney’s door. This was unusual because the cleaning woman used a single master key. The woman entered the suite, did not turn on the light, and shone a flashlight around the office. Candy was wondering whether to intervene when she was interrupted by a modeling student. When her attention returned to Tunney’s office, the woman was just leaving. The next day, Candy learned that the office had been burglarized, but Gene Tunney told her that nothing important had been stolen.

  Two nights later, a young couple began trying different keys in Tunney’s door, and this time Candy approached them, spoke with them briefly, and they left. When she mentioned this incident to Tunney the next day, his reply was, “Oh, really?”

  A week later, Candy met a retired Army general with whom she was acquainted in front of her office building. As they rode up the elevator together, the general mentioned that he was visiting Gene Tunney. Candy, the general, and Tunney talked briefly before she went on with her afternoon’s business.

  A few days after this, an FBI agent appeared at Candy Jones’ office, presented identification, and asked her about the burglary across the hall. He asked her about a microphone she had purchased from Allen Funt, who was doing a radio version of what would become Candid Camera on television, and then asked to borrow it for a long-term surveillance assignment on West 157th Street. The reason he offered for wanting her microphone was its high quality. Candy agreed.

  A month later, the agent returned with a second agent and the microphone. The two proposed to Candy that she allow mail for them to be delivered at her office. Again she agreed. The arrangement was that mail addressed to fictitious names at Candy’s agency would be received and held for pickup by the agent. As well, there might be mail from Europe addressed to Candy or a specific man’s name. In response, she was supposed to phone a number and report its arrival.

  Two weeks later, Gene Tunney moved out of the suite across the hall. The Army general maintained contact with Candy throughout the year she used her office as a mail drop for whatever agency was employing her. Late in the summer of 1960, Candy received a latter from the FBI saying that she should expect a call within a few days. This turned out to be from the Army general. He asked her to deliver a letter to a man who would be her contact at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco during a trip she had scheduled there. The contact was Gilbert Jensen, whose name she didn’t recognize when the general gave it to her.

  On November 16, 1960, Candy Jones and Gilbert Jensen had dinner at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. Her first visit to Dr. Jensen’s office in Oakland was in November, 1960, and the next two were in late 1960 and early 1961.

  Dr. Jensen asked in detail about Candy’s group of childhood imaginary friends, and asked her to choose one as a fictitious name for her CIA passport. He recruited her for the CIA as a courier prior to starting mind control. He had her choose a last name for her fake passport, which she did using Ma-Ma’s married name, Rosengrant. This is how Arlene Grant acquired her last name. Dr. Jensen explained that she would do courier assignments in the United States, in conjunction with her business trips. She would switch to Arlene Grant for occasional overseas trips that were not linked to her personal or business travel.

  Jensen also asked Candy about Arlene’s appearance in the mirror, when she had seen Arlene there during childhood. He then provided Candy with a brunette Arlene Grant wig to match the description. He had a photographer come to her hotel room to take the Arlene Grant passport photograph. Candy kept a copy of this photo, which appears in the biography. In the biography, there is a signed statement from lawyer William J. Williams, dated February 27, 1976, confirming that early in the 1960’s, Candy had given him an envelope to open in the event of her dying or disappearing under unusual circumstances, particularly if she died under a different name. She specified the name Arlene Grant in the letter.

  Candy disclosed to her editor at Harper and Row, Joe Vergara, that she was involved in national and international courier assignments for a secret government agency. Vergara confirmed this to Donald Bain at a lunch at Anatolli’s restaurant on December 12, 1974. She told her friend, columnist Mel Heimer, some vague details about her activities, but he had died before Donald Bain began writing The Control of Candy Jones. According to Candy, Jensen used to interrogate her about what she had told Heimer, read his books, and made a point of watching him during media appearances.

  Candy Jones maintained a box number 1294 at Grand Central Station from August, 1961 to 1968 or 1969, which she used for CIA mail and to receive messages from Jensen. According to the memories uncovered during hypnosis, Jensen met Arlene by chance. She spontaneously took control of the body at his office and identified herself by name. By her account, she already had fully formed multiple personality before Jensen started his mind control.

  Dr. Jensen capitalized on his discovery immediately. He had Arlene describe herself, and instructed her that he could call her out in the future by calling, “A.G.!, A.G.!” He also told Arlene that she would always come up through Candy’s stomach, a suggestion that apparently caused the nausea she experienced on switching. Dr. Jensen conditioned Arlene and Candy through repeated use of hypnosis, sodium amytal, possibly Thorazine, and sexual abuse. She remembered him inserting a lighted candle in her vagina as a demonstration of Arlene’s ability to control pain. This occurred during a demonstration conducted at Camp Peary, Virginia, the CIA training facility where Yuriy Nosenko was held in solitary confinement (see Chapter 4). Dr. Jensen also inserted a post-hypnotic suggestion that Candy would get sick and might even have a convulsion if she ever consulted a psychiatrist. He administered mind control drugs used by OSS, CIA and U.S. Army doctors in mind control experiments, and by the ARTICHOKE team, giving them to her either in orange juice or intravenously.

  Dr. Jensen reported to the senior CIA mind control doctor, who is identified in the biography as Dr. Marshall Burger, a pseudonym. Dr. Burger had hypnotized Candy during a phone conversation in 1946, when he had been consulted because of an attack of severe chills. This was odd, because Dr. Burger was either a psychiatrist or a psychologist. Candy was staying in a hotel in Chicago in order to
appear on a radio talk show, Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club, the next day. A staff assistant from the show advised her that a doctor would be calling to talk to her, which turned out to be Dr. Burger. He became actively involved in her mind control in the 1960’s, and may have implanted preliminary post-hypnotic suggestions in 1946.

  Both Dr. Jensen and Dr. Burger worked intensively with Candy Jones implanting suggestions designed to convert her into a racist, and to make her avoid close personal involvement. They suggested to her that certain people, including blacks, Jews, and Italians, smell bad. The purpose of this programming seemed to be to socially isolate her. Candy was deliberately instructed while under the influence of hypnosis and drugs not to make friends and not to get married.

  Candy described being transported to a rural laboratory-like facility in Texas just inside the Louisiana border. There she attended lectures given by Dr. Burger along with eight or nine other mind control subjects. Dr. Burger was introduced by Dr. Jensen at these lectures, which focused on anti-black racism and world power. Candy remembered being trained in combat, espionage, and surveillance techniques at Camp Peary in 1971. She also remembered being trained at a CIA facility in Florida that had been involved in preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion. She claimed to have become involved in a mission into Son Toy prison camp in North Vietnam, which she was to have participated in under cover of a USO entertainment tour. This mission was scrubbed at the last minute.

  Another memory involved a scene straight out of The Manchurian Candidate, and took place at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Dr. Jensen prepared her for a demonstration in front of twenty-four doctors by giving her an intravenous drug, which he did frequently. The drugs were usually called “vitamins.” She was the first of eight mind control subjects to be demonstrated that day, and considered going first to be particularly stressful. The demonstration took place in an amphitheater. It was there that Dr. Jensen allegedly inserted a lighted candle in her vagina. Several of the doctors tried unsuccessfully to break Dr. Jensen’s mind control, before the demonstration came to an end. Although the date is uncertain, the demonstration seems to have taken place in 1971, prior to termination of MKSEARCH in 1972.

  Part of Candy Jones’ motivation for participating in the mind control and courier assignments included direct payments by the CIA for her sons’ schooling and to cover large hospital bills. She couldn’t have afforded these herself in the years after the divorce. Her first foreign trip for the CIA was in 1965, and in 1966 she went to Taiwan. The Taiwan trip appears to have been a variant of the courier trip to Tokyo described by G.H. Estabrooks (see Chapter 15).

  Candy was switched to Arlene Grant in Dr. Jensen’s office using intravenous drugs. He told her that her destination was Taiwan, and that she would be met there by a man who would recognize her. The man was a prominent Chinese businessman. On the first trip she was treated well, being met at the airport, where she handed over her courier envelope. She was then escorted to a large mansion on big grounds about twenty miles outside of Taipei. At the house, Candy observed two young Chinese women in white lab coats, but they were said by the businessman to be domestic workers. She slept late, ate well, and returned to San Francisco well rested after a three-day stay.

  The second trip to Taiwan began like the first one, with Arlene being called out at Dr. Jensen’s office following administration of vitamins. There is confusion, according to Donald Bain, about whether the torture Candy Jones experienced occurred in two further missions, or only the second, with the third being relatively benign.

  On the second trip, the Chinese businessman and his associates used a variety of physical torture techniques to attempt to extract information from Arlene. She had no information to give them beyond that in the envelopes she had turned over. She was given electric shocks to her wrists, shoulders and fingers, and was threatened with shocks to her breasts. Much of this occurred with Candy strapped in a chair. Following the torture, the torturers became very friendly and explained that the purpose of the shocks was to help jog her memory in a scientific way. On her return to San Francisco, Dr. Jensen gave her another injection and explained that the torture was a mistake. He said it was due to a typographical error.

  On the third trip to Taiwan, Candy delivered an envelope to a woman in an art gallery, who spat in her face after she accepted it. She was then met by the Chinese businessman, and again taken to the mansion in the countryside. Donald Bain (pp. 208) quotes Candy Jones’ own words from an audio tape transcript to describe another incident in Taiwan:

  I was in this place that wasn’t too far from the second airport. It was on Taiwan, but to the south. I can’t think of the name of the airport, but it’s where you go out of Taiwan, not come into it. It was a house about a ten or fifteen minute drive from the airport.

  I was coming back (to the United States) and you don’t always leave from the same airport. The weather was bad and the flight was not going to be taking off. A man told me to come back to the house with him and wait for the flight. I can’t think of his name. He was American, and he was going to be on the same flight … I met him at the airport. He came over to me. He told me that I looked very familiar and asked whether he had seen me there before.

  I was Arlene Grant when he came up to me. The flight was going to be delayed two hours, and he told me the house he was going to was actually part of an American installation, like an officer’s club or something like that. I stupidly said, “Okay, okay.”

  So we went outside and he got us a rickety-tin old cab. We chatted in the cab and he told me he was in Taiwan surveying American business interests there, and had done a report on American holdings. He was wearing civilian clothes, and was very pleasant.

  The house was very nice and looked like a club. Lots of entertainment went on in houses on Taiwan that were turned into nightclubs. I don’t like the look of those big Chinese houses, but some people do. It was a tacky place. We walked in and the same goddam oriental music was playing (Candy was triggered by this music, apparently an aspect of her mind control). There were little tables in the lobby,; it was like an inn. There were a few people around. He asked me what I wanted to drink, and they served anything you wanted. They even had American drinks. We were sitting talking and he asked me whether I would like to see the rest of the place. I agreed. He told me there was a beautiful view that he enjoyed every time he stopped there. There was a very large and beautiful staircase leading upstairs.

  We went in one large room that could have been a dining room or a conference room. He asked me whether I knew a certain man, who had his offices in that house. I don’t know what his name was. He told me this man was an old friend of his and suggested we step in and say hello.

  I followed him into a room. The man behind the desk was middle-aged – forty-eight or forty-nine. He introduced me to the man. The man looked Chinese to me. He was sitting and reading a magazine.

  The man with me told his friend that he had adopted me like an orphan and taken me out of the storm. The man behind the desk spoke English quite well. He invited me to sit down, and told me he had heard about me. I had been introduced to him as Arlene Grant. He asked me where I had been, and obviously I couldn’t tell him the truth. He offered me tea, but I declined. He insisted, however, that I have a drink. I pointed out that I had own downstairs at the table. He suggested I have a fresh one and asked me what I was drinking. I told him vodka on the rocks. He served a fresh drink. He talked a great deal about San Francisco and how wonderful it was that the American woman was free to travel and do things.

  I don’t know what was in that drink but I suddenly became very dizzy. He asked me what was wrong, and I told him that I was dizzy and hot. He asked me if I wanted to relax, but I told him I had to leave because I had to catch a plane. I thought I was going to be sick, and I told him that. He called in a woman who took me to the ladies room. It looked more like an infirmary to me than a ladies room. There were two beds in the room. There was a bathroom, but the be
ds were in a little room separated from the toilet by a curtain. I was drenched with sweat, and very weak. The woman, who was Chinese and spoke very little English, told me that she would take care of my clothes. The sweat was pouring from me, and I could feel my heart beating a mile a minute. I was wearing a suit, and she asked me to give her my jacket. Even the shoulders of my jacket were wringing with sweat. I took off my skirt, jacket and blouse and handed them to the woman. She said she would bring me a gown, and suggested I lie down on the bed. I did and waited for her, but she didn’t come back. She had also taken my shoes. My foot began to ache in the spot where I had broken it a few years before. I was wearing an Ace bandage on it as I often did when I traveled.