Valerie Wolf Interview

CKLN FM 88.1
Ryerson Polytechnic University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
International Connection

Producer: Wayne Morris
   

Wayne Morris:

I am on the line with Valerie Wolf, a social worker and therapist in the New Orleans area, and Valerie treats survivors of severe trauma and mind control. She also gave testimony at the Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in Washington in 1995. Welcome to the show Valerie ... I would like to start off by asking you about your background, and how did you become involved with the survivors of mind control?

Valerie Wolf:

I am a clinical social worker, and I started working with survivors of trauma and sex abuse in 1973 when I was a student at Syracuse University and basically specialized in it ... it gradually became a specialty. I worked at Family Services of Greater New Orleans and became the contact manager for all the child abuse contacts in 1984, and helped set up a whole sex abuse treatment program, got funding from the state, and then when I left there, I worked for a for-profit hospital and set up an in-patient program and picked up more clients. In June 1992, I was at the Eastern Regional Conference in Alexandria, Virginia where the information on the mind control was released. Basically, I didn't get to the talk, but a colleague of mine did and she had referred a client to me. When she heard this talk she immediately found me and said, "I think this mutual client is a victim of the mind control they are talking about." I had a couple of clients who had really worked in therapy, they were doing a lot ... but all they could do was maintain ... even then they were in and out of the hospital. They became flooded with thoughts of wanting to hurt themselves, or wanting to kill themselves, and had to be hospitalized in spite of everything. I had two clients who started going downhill, and I decided to follow what I had learned from that conference audiotape and lo and behold, both clients ended up being victims of mind control. It just kind of went from there ...

Wayne Morris:

Was that the first time you were introduced to the information about mind control experimentation ... was this the presentation by Corey Hammond?

Valerie Wolf:

Yes. I had no idea prior to that.

Wayne Morris:

What did you suspect was going on with your clients before finding this out?

Valerie Wolf:

I really just felt like ... I was pretty unsophisticated ... I mean I was sophisticated for the times in terms of what I was doing ... but looking back now, five years later, I was really pretty unsophisticated. Basically I thought we just hadn't done enough work ... I just kept coming up with different things to try. But if you have someone who is a mind control survivor, and you try to use traditional methods, I don't care how good you are, or what you do ... if you don't have access to the information you can only go so far.

Wayne Morris:

And how did you specifically verify that your clients were victims of mind control after you were exposed to this information?

Valerie Wolf:

Basically what I did was to follow what Corey Hammond had said in his presentation in terms of asking for the core and asking about the Alphabet programs ... it was the best information at the time, but it is not the place to start. My clients have since taught me that there is a better way to start, and it's easier, but both clients were totally flooded when I started that way enquiring about the Alphabet programs. In fact with one client, we got into it, she did electroshock memories and I didn't know what that was. I hadn't seen that before plus I had never been a therapist who did a lot of memory work, and I was with her for 24 hours because I was afraid to leave her but I didn't get the sense she needed to be hospitalized, she just needed to finish it, and she finally did. The other client opened it up, got to that part of her system, and then I happened to work late one night ... I was in my office doing paperwork and she showed up at my door, and said "okay, you opened it up and unless you do something by midnight, I have to die." (laughs) I was like, "omigod, what is it we've opened up here?" We ended up being able to contain it. Now when I start it, I do it very, very differently and I don't get that kind of thing ... we start with containing it, because the other, is the end of it ... for all the programs, the Alphabet stuff. If it's there, that's the end of it ...

Wayne Morris:

By going to that at the beginning, you're saying that triggers a lot of memories ...

Valerie Wolf:

It triggered a lot of memories and they just flooded with all kinds of memories and the intensity ... it was really hard. It was hard because it took a couple of months for me to wake up ... initially I felt responsible, because they were saying "well you opened this up so you have to help with this ...", and then after about three months when I was thoroughly exhausted, I basically said, "wait a minute, I am not responsible for this" and that's when I began to get a grip and set some limits because the normal limits of normal therapy apply, and the first three months were difficult because I didn't know what applied and what didn't. It was almost like the rules changed ... so I just kind of put the rules back in place in terms of limiting phone calls. I didn't have to work on weekends, I didn't have to have late nights. They had survived all this time, and they were going to survive. The drive to survive is extremely strong in some of these clients. I had to understand that.

Wayne Morris:

For other therapists who are possibly dealing with mind control, how is the knowledge of what the experimentation was ... how does that explicitly help in therapy?

Valerie Wolf:

What really helps is that these clients can't really tell you stuff directly ... they talk in metaphors. Also, the way that memories come back ... I really used the BASK model, behaviours that are a result of things that happened in the past; affect/feelings ... people will have feelings that make absolutely no sense in terms of what is happening in the present; sensations which are body pain or body sensations can be memory; knowledge of what it is all about, and why you are experiencing all of this usually comes last. Basically knowing what happened and what specifically they did ... I am always formulating the question, "what could have happened to this person, as a child or as an adult, to make them tell me this? What is it they are trying to tell me?" If I can get a picture, and understand they are giving me metaphors, if I can get a picture of what it is they are trying to tell me, then we can design an intervention together that will deal with and help them get to what the original memory is, what actually did happen. And I can do that very non-directly. I don't have to say, "this happened to you, that happened to you ..." I can say "what is this associated with or what does this remind you of?" "what's going on, what do you think, visualize for me, give me a word picture of what you see inside." So I can ask a series of questions. It's helpful to know the possibilities that go with what they are describing because then I can make a little bit quicker ... if they tell me stuff, I know what they are talking about. If it's an electroshock memory, there is a certain way that those feel, there are certain places in the body where they are more likely to be. I know that we can "take the electrodes off" but I get them to tell me that.

I was really lucky in that a client remembered all these conversations and wrote them out for me, and I got a really clear idea of what the thought was behind the experiments, and what a lot of the experiments were. I have clients who come from all over the country, not just New Orleans so there seem to be real variations in regions in terms of what the focus was, in terms of the experiments. There are some commonalities and there are things that are different.

Wayne Morris:

How did you develop your treatment methods as you worked with survivors of mind control, and recognize that's what you were dealing with? How did that change how you approached the treatment?

Valerie Wolf:

My clients taught me. One of the things I realized from the beginning ... I know that I have a lot to learn. That is the premise I operate from ... I know from doing the trauma work that people really know what they need to do to heal and all you have to do is really listen through what they are saying because they are telling you all the time what they have to do to heal so you let them take the lead. This is no different. The mind control clients know. The other thing is that with DID (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) I know there is someone in the system ... I didn't know it concretely, but I sensed it ... there was a feeling that there was a part behind the scenes directing the process and that I could trust that part to know what it is we needed to do. I have always known that ... that people know what they need to do to heal. That's what I started relying on again. I form a partnership so that if we design an intervention or if a memory comes up, or something comes up, we together figure out how we are going to deal with it. This was how I developed the ways of working with it, and then I also like to know ... and I guess I was trained this way as a student ... to form hypotheses, to check them out, to really think about what it was because a lot of times I will do something intuitively and then I have to think about what it is I did, and why it didn't work or why it did work.

And after I testified in Washington, I started getting calls from therapists and clients from all over the country, and they also ... in terms of their struggles ... would tell me what was working and what wasn't working, what kind of therapist helped and what kind of therapist didn't ... what kind of approach helped and what kind didn't. A lot of them were calling to find out about therapists in their region. I also learned from that, and I was always trying to figure out what is it about this that I was doing differently from other people, why was it working, and then finally I realized, the light bulb went off, that I was dealing with programs as memories rather than getting lost in the complexity of the numbers and codes, the numbers and the codes were conditioned. People were taught to respond in certain ways if they heard a certain sequence of numbers, tones, or whatever it is ... it was done in a deep trance state so you had post hypnotic suggestions that reinforced it ... but it's still a memory. But if you are staying with the codes and the numbers and all the other stuff, what happens is you are really dealing with the surface level, and you really don't get very far. I was talking to a therapist who had started about the same time I did, and I talked to her about six months ago ... and she told me that they had gotten every single code of every alter. I said, " ... and ..." She said "I can call out any alter I want to and talk to them ...", and I said, "well, how is that helping this person function better or whatever ...". "oh well, ..." and she just didn't get the concept, that what you want to do is get these kids or the parts out of where they are and either integrate it or enter a safe place, but it isn't necessary to get the codes to do that.

Wayne Morris:

Right, So what you are saying is that your approach is not necessarily deprogramming per se in terms of dealing with what was done to them in terms of programming ... but to disable that programming ...

Valerie Wolf:

At its roots ...

Wayne Morris:

By remembering what actually happened ...

Valerie Wolf:

Yeah, and the thing is that adheres to good therapy principles ... I have always stuck to that, partly because once I started doing this, I couldn't find anybody else to talk to. It was really difficult. I practiced in isolation for three years, until I went to Washington, and basically worked alone. And it was really lonely ... luckily I have a peer group here who are very supportive of me. People here are really used to the fact that I am always on the edge in terms of pushing the next frontier in terms of treatment ... for example in the middle 1970's I was treating perpetrators. That was a no-no back then. People wouldn't talk to me because I was treating perpetrators, and then in the 1980's that became a kind of common thing and accepted. I did family therapy with perpetrators and kids and that was also a no-no in the late 1970's, but it became part of an accepted treatment protocol in the 1980's. I have always been in the forefront ... so I got a lot of support that way, but what was difficult was, there wasn't anybody who understood the language or the specifics, and that was hard. On the other hand, it threw me back on relying more on what my clients were telling me what was useful and helpful, and they all knew that they had to do memory ... they all knew that instinctively. They knew that's what they had to do.

Wayne Morris:

So what happens ... does that constitute healing that part of the abuse by the actual, active remembering what had happened?

Valerie Wolf:

I do not think that ... first of all, doing memories does not always mean reliving them totally. For some clients they need to do that, because their world view is that they have to experience it and feel it, and they are like that about everything ... they don't believe anything unless they can touch it, and taste it, and feel it. Or, if there is so much pain, they kind of have to dive through the pain to get through. But my view is we are looking for the knowledge, we are looking for what is it specifically that happened to produce behaviour in the here and now, or thoughts or feelings ... By getting a knowledge base, we are looking for information about what happened and I find that once people get that information, what happens is they go "Oh, okay" and they don't have to do it anymore.

Wayne Morris:

So, by just the simple act of remembering, that information ...

Valerie Wolf:

And remembering how they learned to do this specific behaviour ... when they see the connection and how they were conditioned, it's like, "I don't have to do that." Also what you want to do ... because these people are either DID or DD (NOS) which is ego state feelings but not full-blown alters ... and they don't come out into the body and introduce themselves, there are parts, they are differentiated, but not to the degree say someone with full-blown DID or MPD where the parts come out and have distinct names, and distinct identities, they come all the way out into the body and function for the person who is the core birth personality. And then there are people who are kind of in-between and I have a peer group now in Atlanta who are doing this kind of work, and we put our heads together ... we get information ... in terms of trying to figure out treatment, and that's been really useful. Basically we have termed it "fuzzy DID" -- they are not as undifferentiated as DD NOS but they are not quite DID, and it's more like the parts blend with the core birth personality. Sometimes they may come out into the body, but only for very brief periods of time, but they are not as well developed, and it's kind of an in-between, and that's where most of these people are that I have seen and the experience of the therapists in Atlanta. It makes it hard to diagnose because it's fuzzy ... they lose time ... they have some of the same symptoms, but the switches are a lot more subtle and a lot more rapid, where someone with full-blown DID ... you know when someone new has come into the body. It's real clear that is happening.

Wayne Morris:

How does the "fuzzy dissociation" relate to the amnesia barriers between the identities and the uses of mind control?

Valerie Wolf:

Well basically, the way I have come to understand DID or fuzzy DID ... basically what you have is a part that is the core birth personality -- the original personality born into the body, not a baby as was commonly thought and it would make sense that it is not a baby. What happens is, a child which develops the way I would say these people have under the age of five to seven, probably under the age of five -- you have a very small child, and the easiest way I can explain it is that there is abuse in the family so what happens is, "this person who is abusing me, I also have to love them." Little kids, under the age of five, can't handle ambivalence really well so what they will do is actually create a part that has the ability to take the hurt, and be hurt, and they will create a part that says "I love you" whoever it is that ... so they can hold these two mutually incompatible thoughts and feelings at the same time. There has to be amnesia between them, because the part that is being hurt would be too confused by having to love this person who is hurting them and the part that has to love would be confused being hurt, so there has to be an amnesia barrier there. And that's the purpose. As time goes on, and there is more abuse, and it is prolonged, a child naturally creates more and more personalities and all of the personalities have a job ... they are created for a purpose ... it's either to hold memories, or feelings because in an abusive family or situation kids are not allowed to have feelings ... if they cry they get hurt; if they get angry they get hurt; so they have to create parts to hold the feelings. If you are being hurt at home, you have to create parts that will go to school and function that will deal with the outside world, and the core birth personality therefore is always protected and allowed to grow up fairly normally. Now what will happen is, you will be presented with somebody who looks kind of flat, who doesn't have a lot of feeling, who seems kind of pale and passive ... the reason is that all of the things that make for character have been split among the parts. So when she needs anger, she switches or blends, with a part. That's how all of that develops. For some kids, it all depends on what state they don't develop fully ... for kids who have been really severely abused at a very young age going into this, I think their personalities are more well defined. I don't know what the difference is ... as to why some people are full-blown DID and others are less ... and I hate to say less well developed, because they function very well. I think they do what they need ... they go to the degree that they need to survive.

Wayne Morris:

So at the time the blending takes on between the core person and an alter, does the person have access to the memories and experiences of both identities at that point ... what happens at that blending?

Valerie Wolf:

The blending point ... when a part blends with the core birth personality, if they have a job to do, they will just do that job ... and the memories don't link ... although that part is acting on memories or acting on things they were told they needed to do in order to protect the core birth personality. But as far as giving memories, the parts know where the core birth personality is at all times, and understand their primary function is to protect the core birth personality so they will only give their memories when the core birth personality is ready for them. The thing with the amnesia barriers, going back to your question, the core birth personality is protected from all this information and knowledge by amnesia barriers ... may not even know she or he has parts ... the amnesia is to that degree and that's a protection. By the same token, the parts inside know that the core birth personality is there.

Wayne Morris:

This whole process of dissociation seems to be more of a defense mechanism to trauma, than a so-called disorder ...

Valerie Wolf:

Absolutely. It is the most creative coping skill that I have ever seen. It is unbelievable how well it functions for people. I have a client who is really sick, chronically ill. Her doctor recently said to me that he could see how DID could be really functional, because if he had all the things wrong with him that she has, he would "be nuts ... and she copes so well". He could see the value of being able to dissociate in order to deal with this myriad of symptoms that are hard to diagnose, or are just really uncomfortable to deal with. It is a wonderful coping strategy. That's how I see it, and that's how I work with it.

Wayne Morris:

I just wanted to go back to the point about remembering to disable the programming ... you spoke in your presentation about trigger words or sounds or phrases that were used to bring out the different identities ... by the process of remembering, does that disable the triggers as well?

Valerie Wolf:

What you have with the mind control is a systematic way of trying to structure someone's mind so that people could have total control over them. That is what we are dealing with here. They were dealing with very young children, as young as 2 or 3 when this started, some were older, but they found that from 2 1/1 to 3 1/2 (from what I understand) was the best age to start because their minds were much moldable at that point. They created what survivors call The Matrix inside their head and it can take on a lot of variations and forms -- the most common one is -- survivors talk about it as being like a Rubik's cube -- and they started with a simple 9x9 tic-tac-toe matrix and each little square was a cell or room, and every time an alter came out or was created through the pain, they would condition that alter to respond to a certain word, letter or whatever and then they would have to go into their place in the matrix and that cell had that number or whatever ... and they kept track of all of this ... so that if you needed a part for a specific job, and they knew what they all were because they either gave the jobs or if the child spontaneously created a job because they knew what they all were ... they would just call out that number designation, and get that alter or that group of alters that would suit their purpose at the time.

In the course of treatment, where I start is with safe place imagery -- the core birth personality creates a safe place. There is a protocol for doing that, but most of the time they already have it. This is good trauma treatment ... I do this with every single client who reports any kind of abuse -- that's where I start. And mind control victims are no different than that ... The task is to work through the matrix ... once a part's job is over they can either integrate or go to the safe place. They don't have to stay in there. Once we get the information or they understand ... also that the number refers to the cell, not to them, that's not their name ... and when they realize that (because they think it is their name but it's not, because they often have other names) ... once they realize they don't have to stay in there any more, they end up going to the safe place where they directly integrate. And a lot of times when they go into the safe place, they will go there, rest a while, and then they will integrate. Your task is to clear out all the parts in the matrix ... and all these parts were harmed in the mind control experiments. The other thing is they were told to stay in their cells, they couldn't talk to anybody, they couldn't talk to the core birth personality, they had to stay isolated. These kids were as busy undoing it as it was done ... a lot of them, probably most whether they admit it or not, then created halls and tunnels, caves or rooms behind the matrix. They learned that they could create this matrix, so why couldn't they create something else. So a lot of times when I hear an image of a cave, a tunnel, a hall, or whatever ... I will ask "is that yours, did you create that, or did they?" If the kid created it, then we know it is a defensive thing, it is useful and it is there for purpose. If they did, then we know it's something we either have to bypass or deal with to get rid of. We use that series of tunnels or whatever in the back of the matrix ... it is like a maze ... and that's how I visualize it ... we are working through the maze to get all the kids out of the matrix and once the matrix is empty, you can blow it up, it isn't needed any more, and then there is always more after that ... there is more than one ... and I am not going to say how many because I am not going to be suggestive ... but there is more than one part to it so you just keep clearing out until you get to the end of those and then there are other memories that come and then you are done.

Wayne Morris:

That seems to be a pre-requisite to being able to heal and have a good therapy session, is creating a physical safe place within the actual environment and also, as you were speaking, creating the emotional and mental safe place within the client.

Valerie Wolf:

It is great containment because ... even when they say there is no safe place, because they did a lot of stuff done around "there is no safe place" ... well there always is ... there always is. Whether they admit it or not, there always is, because children know better. They can create something in their minds. I will get that ... "there is no such thing as a safe place" and I will say "oh yeah? I don't believe it." And sure enough, there will be something there, behind it, that they have constructed with barriers and walls, and often using their pain and their methods to hide it ... so they have to go through pain to get to it and clear out all that stuff ... again that's working with the metaphors and the images.

As far as the memory work is concerned, I have clients who come in, they've got body pain or there is something going on, I will say, "what is that associated with, what does that remind you of, what's going on?" and they give me a picture and they will say, "oh, they did such-and-such ..." and then they will just describe it, they don't have to abreact it. That's not a necessary ingredient for everybody. For some it is ... for some it is.

Wayne Morris:

Could you just explain the term "abreaction"?

Valerie Wolf:

Abreact means totally re-living what happened, with all the pain, and the confusion ... as if it happened again. And my concern sometimes with abreaction is that you are just re-traumatizing people, because they are re-living the same trauma. But when you add in the twist that you are looking for information about what happened, and they are analyzing it, and looking at the information, then it is not traumatic. If you go into it as a cathartic release, just to discharge the emotions, then I really think people do get re-traumatized. I have a lot of people who were seen by other therapists in the eighties who are coming into therapy again because they did all this re-living, abreactive work ... and the symptoms and the memories are coming back because they never got the piece of the knowledge and understanding of what it is that exactly happened to them. And when we do that piece, it gets finished. To me that's the critical piece -- the knowledge.

Wayne Morris:

In some of your clients, you are saying they don't have to abreact to go through the remembering process, to avoid the body memories as well?

Valerie Wolf:

No they are not. They have body memories but with body memories, I will ask, "take a look and see what's causing that?" I don't suggest ever. I just say, "what's going on, what's causing that, take a look." And they will tell me. If it's electrodes, and they will tell you in a lot of different ways, I will just say, "you can take those off there." One of the parts of the safe place is to develop a healing pool, because water dissolves everything ... the reason that works ... or if a needle got stuck, or if their limbs are dislocated ... sometimes with their permission, what I will do is pull their shoulder a little bit and if it is "dislocated", I will "pull it out and put it back in" the socket. Sometimes I have to take off the electrodes initially, until they learn how to do it. The reason that works is that at some point in that memory, they had to take the electrodes off ... they couldn't leave needles in them ... they couldn't leave their shoulder dislocated ... so at some point that did happen, and all we are doing is fast-forwarding the memory to the end where everything was put back in place.

Wayne Morris:

After being exposed to the information about government mind control experimentation, how did you pursue finding out more about this?

Valerie Wolf:

It's like a double-edged sword for me. When I started getting information from clients, I started sending it to people doing research, like Alan Scheflin for verification ... because I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea who any of these people were, and they would call me back and say, "Valerie do you know who so-and-so is?" And I would have no clue. It turned out to be people who were involved in this and I had absolutely no idea. Nor did my clients know. A lot of times the names would come out in a really painful memory, but I didn't know and they didn't know. In order to do treatment, I don't need to know who was who and what they did and all that kind of stuff. I just passed this information on to Alan. I have not read in the area, my clients have not read in the area. I don't want to read, because I don't want to know more than my clients do. I don't want to take a chance of cuing them or reacting to something. With some of my newer clients I do know a lot, but my interest at this point is really in figuring out this treatment process and really figuring out how to get these people functional. That's where I put all my energy. As far as the details of it, I am not that interested in (I guess I need to know some of it, especially local people) all that information because it doesn't help in terms of therapy.

Wayne Morris:

Have you pursued getting more information about the experiments themselves, what was done, the particulars ...

Valerie Wolf:

Yes, that is more useful information to me ... to know specifically what was done, the kinds of things to expect, techniques, etc. because that allows me to interpret the metaphors and that's what they talk about. If my clients do know names, they are not telling me. A couple of my clients do know names, one knows a lot ... she was marvellous in the way she made rhymes and all kinds of ways to present the information ... she used the memory techniques they taught her to remember the information ... limericks and rhymes, making words out of the names so she could remember. It was fantastic. But most of my clients just want to survive day-to-day and get better and get on with their lives. They know Dr. Green -- everybody knows Dr. Green, that name comes up spontaneously. When I see clients who are mind controlled, I don't tell them what it is. Basically what happens is I get people who have had many therapists, or they have one therapist and they have been stuck for a long time. They have done the family abuse, there may or may not be satanic ritual abuse, other kinds of sex ring abuse, and they are stuck. I hear things like "I am afraid of doctors" ... or I have had clients who get stuck on a memory for a year or two years and they keep looping around this memory but they never get to anything.

There are certain things I look for ... I begin to suspect this, start asking some really discreet questions, and then basically if I become convinced this has happened, what I say to people is "I think something else happened to you ... for these reasons ... these the things you have been saying ... you have been stuck ... there has to be something else." I have a fairly decent idea of what this might be, because there are clues. But I will say "I can't tell you ... you have to know that these are your memories and not something that I have suggested to you. If I start telling people about all the mind control stuff, and then they get the memories, they are going to have a question as to whether it is what I told them because their hold on reality is tenuous sometimes, not in terms of functioning but in terms of knowing what is real and what is not real. I just wait until it is time for the core birth personality to get the information and it is fascinating to see however long it takes for t hat to come up and they start talking about government-sponsored research, the CIA ... and I know that I have not told them this, and I know they don't have access to this information because most of these people are not on the internet and if they are, they certainly not in the mind control areas. There is not a whole lot written on this except in certain areas. They are not likely to go to a bookstore and get a book about it ... they don't have access to this information. When they recover or get that memory of what it really is about, they know that is their memory and not something someone else has suggested. I will ask that too - "what have you read, what have you read about memory, what do you know about memory from the media?" and we will talk about it.

Wayne Morris:

Have you felt that you had had to change your approach about documenting what happens in your therapy sessions because of groups like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation?

Valerie Wolf:

Yes and no. I think I have to be more careful -- so rather than a client-centered process and talking about what the client is doing, I have to add more about what I am doing now. It used to be that notes reflected what the clients were saying and what the clients were doing, and the progress they were making, etc. etc. Now it has shifted to where I have to write about what I am doing as a therapist. I think that is a major difference. I don't think it's all that bad ...

Wayne Morris:

How do you go about documenting this ... through therapy notes? Have you ever felt required to videotape a therapy session for any reason?

Valerie Wolf:

Yes, documenting through notes. I have thought about videotaping a session, and I have audiotaped sessions for clients who have been accessed. That was very very useful because it made me really conscious of what I was saying and doing. It was useful from that standpoint. But as far as admissibility or if I ever got sued and it went to court -- if someone is doing memory (and this is one of the clients who was abreacting and doing a great job) you hear "stop, please don't" on the tape -- how do they know it's a memory and it isn't something I am doing? Do you understand what I am saying? You can't distinguish ...

The other thing is ... and I have talked to a number of people about it ... apparently in the court cases that have come up, they have twisted stuff on the tape that was totally innocent so basically my feeling is you give them more ammunition not less. This is not a surgical process where you know where you are going to cut, you know what you are going to do, and how much. There is a lot of human interaction that goes on, and they could pick at anything. I just don't think it really matters whether you videotape or audiotape. I did find it useful to do the audiotape just to make me conscious of what it was I was doing in the session.

Wayne Morris:

How do you feel about groups like the FMSF with regard to their approach to this recovered memory debate?

Valerie Wolf:

My real honest to goodness feeling is that they have done us a favour. They brought up some issues that were real issues we needed to take a look at. I think people like myself -- when the McMartin pre-school ritual abuse case in California first came up -- I was at a conference and met all the people and heard the criticisms of Kee McFarlane. She did interviews according to what we did at that time. The prosecutors did not ask her to do forensic interviews, they did not train her in how to do that. She did essentially what we were doing, and did a good job. But essentially she got crucified. Lightbulbs went off for those of us doing the work at that time, who had some experience. We began to realize they were right. I began adjusting the way I was doing things at that point -- in 1984 -- being more non-direct, more non-leading is actually better therapy. I used to do talks about sex abuse, child abuse, testimony. One of the facts I came across in 1990 was that we were operating on memory re search that had been done in 1911 -- there really hadn't been a whole lot of research on trauma memory. I think they pointed out a gap in our knowledge. On the other hand I think the FMSF is a backlash, and it was inevitable. In the 1980's we really had our way in terms of child abuse and sex abuse and I think a backlash was inevitable. People who have a lot of experience, who have seen the cyclical nature of this understand that this is going to happen. Part of the problem now is that we have really cleaned up our act -- I do workshops and training and I can hear more and more therapists becoming more careful -- becoming better therapists, becoming non-leading -- but they are still riding the same horse, they are still accusing the same way and it makes me wonder if there is another agenda here because we are cleaning up our act ...

Wayne Morris:

And they (FMSF) are not acknowleding that ...

Valerie Wolf:

No. They are saying "this research means nothing" ... "it is irrelevant". It is totally relevant. A lot of the research is confirming what it is we, as therapists, have known and what we have been saying.

Wayne Morris:

So you feel their early criticisms have in a general sense improved the quality of therapy ...

Valerie Wolf:

Yes I do.

Wayne Morris:

How do you think FMSF has affected the access to therapy for survivors?

Valerie Wolf:

Unfortunately there are a lot of therapists who are very scared, have dropped out, don't want to do this kind of treatment any more, and I think that's sad. But I can understand it. I get scared sometimes. I have had two people who came to me by legitimate referral sources who all of a sudden, within a couple of weeks, were coming in for anxiety, depression, disorganization, that kind of stuff ... within a couple of weeks all of a sudden I am getting all of these questions about multiple personality disorder, and it was sort of similar for both ... all of these questions about MPD, and do you think maybe I have that? Bringing me in pictures, trying to trip me up in terms of interpreting the pictures ... I see the green triangle within the pictures. But that's unusual. People do not come in questioning. Usually they are hiding everything from you, it takes a year or two to even understand there is something there you need to be thinking about. To come in within a couple of weeks and push and push and push ... After a couple of weeks, with both of them, I just asked "all right who do you have to talk to when you leave here?" In one case it was her father, and in the other case it was her uncle. Both these people recognized my name and they had instructions to get me to diagnose them, and to do that, and do this, etc. They were looking for a lawsuit. That's scary. I am a pretty trusting soul ... that's scary. Basically what I had to do was finish up the surface work they came in for, because that was my therapy contract with them, but in terms of doing any kind of deeper work in terms of abuse or anything else, it just wasn't safe for them, or for me. They agreed with that, and we terminated therapy. I never know when someone walks in my office. And other therapists have reported the same stuff. I never know. It's a risk every time I take a new client. And that's terrible. I also know some of my client have been accessed at times by their former perpetrators, and that is really scary too because there have been real attempts to get them to turn on me, convinced them that I have abused them, that I don't care or this or that ... I can tell by their behaviour if they have been accessed because they become really angry with me, they disconnect, and I haven't done anything.

Wayne Morris:

I have read of survivor accounts of being programmed initially to throw the therapist off ...

Valerie Wolf:

But regular "therapist" programming (if you can call it that ...) that was put in place a long time ago is easy to deal with once you know what it is. I do not look for this. It upsets me a lot when I realize this is what I am dealing with. I have a colleague who I talk to who has followed my journey here, and I will talk to him about a client, and he will say, "you know Valerie, you are talking about this person just how you talk when you don't want to deal with the fact that they are mind controlled ..." It upsets me when I find another mind controlled person. I would much rather just deal with normal, regular ... because of the pain involved. It is so hard to know that here is somebody else ...

Wayne Morris:

How many mind controlled survivors have you dealt with over the years?

Valerie Wolf:

I deliberately haven't counted, deliberately don't know how many I have in my caseload right now, because what has happened in the past is -- when they have accessed clients, I have known and basically they start trying to figure out who they are and if they know a number they can start trying to figure out who they are and I don't want them to know. I can think of people I have treated in the past before I knew this ... they were probably mind controlled and I had no idea. I deliberately don't know the answer to that question. I am in contact with a lot of people from across the country who call me, colleagues who consult with me about clients who are mind controlled. I do workshops. I have come into contact with a lot ... probably hundreds of people in terms of direct treatment.

Wayne Morris:

Just to get back to the recovered memory debate, how prevalent currently do you think false memory implantation by the therapist is going on?

Valerie Wolf:

I have come across in clients several examples of really bad therapy. I treat parents as well as survivors. That has been really important for me to do ... to understand the offenders or non-offending parent ... because it really is a family problem. I really needed to know how perpetrators think in order to better serve survivors. I have treated several people where I think the therapist was pushing what wasn't there. Again by listening through what the therapist was saying the client was saying, and listening to what the parent(s) were saying ... when the therapist says to me "the client isn't sure" and I will say "well, you seem certain, what are you basing it on?" and she will say "she has all these dreams." Dreams don't make for memories, dreams are symbolic. That's one scenario I have run into a couple of times. Another scenario I have run into with mind controlled people is where people who have been ritually abused and they don't know about the mind control or think they have only been ritually abused, often tend to go to Christian counsellors. Sometimes these therapists really get into their own agendas and they are very suggestible. One woman came to me and her therapist said to me that she had basically seen her for five years, and basically what she would do for the last three was have the client sit in the chair, close her eyes, and the therapist would say, "think of the snake, imagine the snake or think about this ... get an image of Satan" and she did a lot of damage, a lot of damage. When this client finally got out of therapy with her because she realized and was referred to me, a lot of our early work together was in separating out what was suggested by this therapist and what was real true memory. I have discovered with several clients like this, they do know the difference between what is planted and suggested and what is real if you give them the chance to distinguish. They do know what is real. Clinically that is m y experience. In the mind control stuff, ther e was a lot of research, and a lot of attempts to plant false memories. There, they do know the difference.

Wayne Morris:

I would just to shift the topic a bit. You gave testimony at the Human Radiation Hearings in 1995. President Clinton struck an Advisory Committee to look into the radiation experiments done on humans. How did you become involved in that?

Valerie Wolf:

There was a client in New Mexico and they had radiation hearings in her area, and she went and requested to testify because she remembered both radiation and mind control experiences. The man who was setting up the hearings, Wally Cummings, became interested because it appeared there was some cross-over between the radiation and the mind control subjects. U.S. News and World Report (January 24, 1994) published an article entitled "Cold War Guinea Pigs: The government's secret experiments using radiation, mind control, chemicals and drugs on its citizens". Wally Cummings became interested in some of the potential overlap so he started making inquiries about people to testify and bring this information before the Committee. They were also looking for documentation to do with radiation, and my name came up and my two clients, because I had been sending material to researchers and trying to verify or validate what my clients were saying, and I had done it in a very careful, meticulous way. He called and asked if I would do it, and invited my two clients. I talked to them and they both agreed. This was two weeks before the Hearings. At that time I was taking my son to see colleges. I was on the road, I was on vacation. What I decided to do was rather than just go and testify with these two clients, in addition I would send written testimony to the Hearings because we were allowed to do this. I asked if people would send me a statement from either therapists, clients, to back up what we were talking about. Things poured in. This is now a week and a half before we left. The things just poured in -- faxes and mail. I literally almost didn't sleep for a week because I had to make copies of everything. One of the things I had to be careful about was to eliminate people's names because it is all on the fax ... I didn't want their names or numbers going out because I knew it was going to be public record. I assembled about twenty statements and sent it with our written testimony. We were allowed to do written statements although we could only talk for five minutes, and I wrote something, Colin Ross wrote something , Alan Scheflin wrote something backing us up and we sent it all on to the Radiation Commission. We went to Washington and testified. People still send me stuff but I am not doing anything with it, I am not doing research. It never really got erased from the internet that I really didn't need stuff any more.

Wayne Morris:

Can you give us a sense of the committee members' response at the time of giving testimony?

Valerie Wolf:

It was interesting. We really grabbed them. I started, gave the overview, made some of the connections, and I am used to public speaking. As I started to speak, there was a member of the commission who turned to his neighbour and said, "what is this doing here?" Not loudly. It wasn't, "What is this?" ... it was "What is this doing here?" I got mad. I didn't want him disrupting us so I just projected ... and his neighbour shushed him because she wanted to hear us and then Claudia and Chris testified and did a really great job ... people were very moved.

The main thrust of the question was ... I think there was some skepticism. I know from feedback later that some people believed us, some people were very skeptical, but the main point made by the guy who asked most of the questions was, 'there has to be documentation of this, you are not going to get anywhere without documentation', which I knew. We were just at the beginning of the process. In that moment, they believed, I think, and then after they had time to reflect ... the reality was, 'this is not a hearing about mind control'. We were given a lot of time. Half an hour is a lot of time. Most people got two or three minutes to speak, or five minutes at the most. We were told to expect this by the ACHRE people ... they gave us a lot of time. They followed up on everything that we told them. Then what happened was that the survivors across the country, as the word got out, deluged them with phone calls and letters, and it was that follow-up that made it believable. We broke the ice, broke the silence, and gave them the overview.

The other thing that was amazing was when we came down from testifying, and went back to our seats, we were mobbed by the radiation people -- coming up and saying things like 'you knew Dr. Green? I knew Dr. Green. Wasn't he a bastard?' or 'now I know what Dr. Green did to me', 'now I know what my loved one (because people were representing those who had died) was saying'. It turned out that the overlap between the mind control and the radiation -- I mean we had been looking at the radiation and people being sick in the mind control population -- it turned out that there was also mind control in the radiation population. That overlap was really interesting. But I think it was the back-up support from all the people, all the survivors in the country that really pushed it -- then they (ACHRE) put everything we asked for and recommended in the final report of the Radiation Committee -- to reveal and make public all human experimentation documents, there will be a suspicion, enquiries, etc. etc. unt il that is done. And that was really one of the things we were trying to do.

Wayne Morris:

Did you find out what the response was of the U.S. government to the Advisory Committee after the final report with regard to the mind control? Most of our listeners realize that President Clinton did give a public apology to the radiation victims and some compensation to some of of the victims -- but specifically to the mind control victims ...

Valerie Wolf:

It wasn't part of their 'charge' so it wouldn't have been appropriate for them to do that ... they made recommendations in the final report. The other thing that happened after we testified is that the ACHRE people -- who are the citizen committee members -- there is always a citizens committee that arranges for the witnesses, oversees the process, and makes sure the information gets put before the Commission -- the head of it, Cooper Brown, met with me and said 'you have to get a hearing' and he gave me the whole blueprint of how they got a hearing. I was writing furiously and got the whole blueprint of how to get a hearing and I have written that up and given it out at the conference in Dallas a year ago, and again this year, and I think it has been published on the internet -- and then the ACHES-MC -- the advocacy group for the mind control survivors is following that blueprint.

Wayne Morris:

ACHES-MC and other survivors are calling for the U.S. and Canadian governments to open investigations into the mind control experimentation. What further needs to happen to force the governments to open this kind of Commission of inquiry?

Valerie Wolf:

I have no idea. I think there needs to be the grassroots level of support and more and more people writing, and talking because I think that's what happened with the radiation commission. So many people wrote to them, and called them, and backed us up that they really had to take it seriously and I think that is probably the thing here -- we need to write, and keep writing, and keep advocating and be appropriate and just keep going and going and going. The other thing is that while it would be really nice to get a hearing tomorrow, it isn't a bad thing that this is taking time because we need people healed who are not going to be triggered, because they are going to be trying to trigger people left and right if they go testify. We need time for people to heal before we go testify. I know that what Chris and Claudia did was extremely courageous because they were having constant flashbacks the whole time we went to Washington, before and after testifying. It was extremely painful and difficult f or them to do that. Extremely. Their courage was just astounding, but I think if we can get people through the process and free and healed, we will present a much better case.

Wayne Morris:

How do you think the public is understanding these issues on mind control? We have been seeing the U.S. government coming forward and apologizing for experimenting on humans, as in the Tuskagee experiments and radiation experiments ... so I think there is a sense of distrust of the government in the sense that, 'yes, this is possible'. What is your sense of the public understanding of the issues around this, it does seem to take a bit to understand everything.

Valerie Wolf:

Actually I have been kind of surprised ... I have a normal life. I come into contact with people and sometimes what I do comes up and some people are skeptical. But you know what? Most people believe it without any trouble, without any doubt. These are educated people. Sometimes they are skeptical, but that's good ... you will have a discussion about it, but a lot of times what I get is, 'I can believe that happened' and sometimes, and this blows my mind, if it comes up in a social situation or whatever ... my husband will say something, or I will say something, I am astounded at how many people can name the people locally here that were involved in it, and there is some degree of knowledge -- professionals. It was not that big a secret. I am absolutely astounded. I have received validation and verification from people in the community because instantly there is one name -- and I am not going to talk names today -- a name comes to mind because this was local, and it doesn't pertain. That kind of blows me away ... I met a psychologist at a party a couple of years ago, and was talking to him a little bit, and I kind of test people, to see their tolerance for this ... He said, 'oh yeah, I interviewed as a psychologist for the CIA in 1975 or something and I talked to so-and-so and he told me all about it' -- it was one of the key people who has been named by the clients. I am astounded by the people in the professional community who have this knowledge. I think it has been on TV a lot -- X-Files -- I always wondered how the X-Files got their facts so accurately, because they have talked about MKULTRA and they have shown mind control, and they do a really good job, and a couple of weeks ago I got called by them, which was really exciting, for some background information. They do research on their shows. They are not just making this up. There are other places too in the media ... I think people see it more than we realize, and yeah, they be lieve it.

Wayne Morris:

It is interesting -- I haven't seen the X-Files too much -- they do tend to put a lot of surface information, but they do also put their own spin on the reasons for why this is happening, who is responsible.

Valerie Wolf:

Yeah, they do, but this time what they were looking for was the specific people, I don't know when it is coming up ... It was neat. My son, who is in college, said to me "Oh good ... now I have something to brag to my friends about" -- my stock with him went way up, because we are both real big fans of the X-Files.

Wayne Morris:

After the experience of giving testimony and being contacted by other therapists and survivors after the hearings, what is your sense of how prevalent mind control is?

Valerie Wolf:

I don't know. I really don't know. Therapists who work with trauma like myself, have studied it, and thought about it -- I think we probably have clients like that. I don't know how many have been identified. My feeling is that it is possibly tens of thousands ... it is really hard to say how many.

Wayne Morris:

What would your advice be to other therapists who may be coming across accounts of mind control experimentation? What kind of information and resources exist? You mention that you have been doing workshops. Have other therapists been doing this?

Valerie Wolf:

Basically right now I think it is mostly word of mouth ... I think we have been reluctant to write about it. I have a hard time. I have a handle on it now ... I look at writing some stuff (when I have time). There is really not much published about this that is mainstream, accessible. Most of it is word of mouth at this point.

Wayne Morris:

I would like to talk about how prevalent are memories of ritual abuse and child sexual abuse in the clients that have undergone mind control experimentation ...

Valerie Wolf:

They all report sexual, physical and emotional abuse and the systematic -- the words are kind of the same in terms of the messages they are given about themselves -- they are "worthless" "will never be a success" -- really downing yourself, really taking away their control. I have clients with no memories of ritual abuse. I have clients with memories of ritual abuse that is clinical and laboratory based. I think ritual abuse is basically, most of the time, sex rings that get together and use costumes to terrify kids and keep them under control. Satan is a good image because of religion. Here they use mardi gras costumes (in New Orleans) -- clients have talked about that. Basically they are groups of pedophiles engaged in child prostitution and sometimes you will hear about child pornography. Some of it is organized crime involved with child pornography and child prostitution, and some of it is groups of pedophiles, men and women, who get together and do whatever they want with kids and I thi nk the satanic imagery heightens the excitement for them. I think there may be true satanic cults but I think the thing that has always been missing for me is how it shows up in your daily life. If you are a practicising satanist, I think it is something that I think would show up in your daily life or show up in rituals or whatever -- but it doesn't -- so that kind of leads me to believe it is for another purpose which is to terrify kids and keep them under control. That's how I see ritual abuse.

I think what happened was Dr. Green started screening kids -- apparently there were several criteria for selecting kids for the project -- one was that they had to already have been traumatized somewhat so they had the ability to dissociate; another was they had to have good memories; another was they had to be really intelligent. As time went on, he looked for compliance traits because there were some real rebellious ones that fought him. When you look at that, at some point you come across the fact that some of these kids were already being abused in sex rings. One of the things they wanted to do was make kids forget, have amnesia for stuff that was happening to them. There are a number of ways of doing that. Trauma is the best way of inducing amnesia for an event. What Dr. Green would do is order a trauma -- and if they had a sex ring lurking in the background, he would just send them back to be ritually abused again and that would create a ritual abuse memory and then he would do his thing, and then send them back again -- Claudia describes it like a sandwich: you have a trauma, ritual abuse, back to the laboratory and Green does his nasty little thing and then you have another trauma after and they were spaced in certain ways in order to maximize the dissociative effect and maximize the amnesia for what Green was doing. So they were allowed to remember the ritual abuse, but that was supposed to keep therapists busy, busy, busy for a long time and you were never, ever supposed to get to the mind control stuff. And all my clients have told me this.

Another way it happened was if there was not a sex ring, or satanic cult or whatever in the background readily available, then I think Green produced the same kind of effect in the laboratory and introduced images of satan, people in costumes, did the same kinds of ritual stuff -- but you get more of a sense that it is not as full, it is not as much abuse, and there isn't as much ceremony or learning that takes place like it does in ritual abuse. I have clients that report either.

Wayne Morris:

How much do you think could be real?

Valerie Wolf:

I think some of it is real. I mean it is all "real" in the sense in which the child experiences. But in the sense of fake scenes or doing little plays to convince them of things ... I think there was a lot of that. As people start to remember, a lot of times they will have double memories. They will have a memory of what actually took place and then a memory of what they were led to believe took place. Basically all I have to do once someone tells me something -- I will just ask, "is there anything else?" until they tell me no there is nothing else, until I am sure. You find these double memories or tricks. For example, all the child murders that you hear about -- a lot of times what I find is you have a child who is terrified, who is abused, who is dissociating in a trance like state, who is drugged, and they witness something, and they think a child got murdered, and they did it. And they did it in all kinds of ways. For example, one of my clients woke up with blood all over her hands and she would see this thing on the table and she was told it was the baby and she stabbed it to death and stabbed it so hard it has no character. Well, basically I said, 'what is really on the table?' It was either roast or liver or sometimes they would have a real baby but what I will ask then, 'is there a smell in the room?' And they will think about for a minute, and say, 'oh - it's formaldehyde.' These are doctors who have access to research specimens preserved .. a baby who died at birth, deformed or whatever. If you get the formaldehyde smell, you know that this corpse came from a hospital. Or they would show them a child, distract their attention, and substitute a doll. That's why a lot of times you will hear the victim, especially in the 50's, 60's and into the 70's, talk about the child having blonde hair and blue eyes. Dolls at that time were mostly blonde with blue eyes.

Wayne Morris:

Why would they be going to these lengths in experimenting -- what uses were they putting mind control to?

Valerie Wolf:

You have to think about post World War II and the Cold War. From what I understand, a lot of it was panic about the Russians or someone else gaining an edge and being able to infiltrate America and gain control of the citizens or the military or whatever. I think they were very taken off guard about what happened to prisoners in Japan, and the Asians, because they had perfected brainwashing techniques on American prisoners. The Korean War spurred it, and that became more public. I think we were looking to see if there were uses in terms of creating spies and what is the perfect spy ... it is someone with DID whose core birth personality goes on vacation some place, a part comes out, makes contact. Another part comes out and makes the meeting, another part comes out -- each part has amnesia for the others -- it is like a chain. Each one has a piece of the puzzle but nobody puts it all together. They go and they are sexual, or they assassinate, and they do whatever they are supposed to do. Anot her part records everything that goes on and remembers it. Another part gets them out of there, and then the core birth personality comes back to the vacation. If he or she gets caught, and is interrogated, all the amnesia barriers are in place plus they have been conditioned to withstand a lot of pain. They won't give any information, and that is in effect, the perfect spy or the perfect operative. I have also heard of other people being trained in computer technology or physics ... and then being called on ... taken to a place to do work and they don't have to pay for it. I have heard of clients going on a plane somewhere, they get called, they go somewhere and do something, and then they come back. I think they put a lot of money into these people and I would think they are using them still.

Wayne Morris:

If what survivors of mind control are saying is true, and we seem to be living in times when the political elites in government and the military seem to have access to mind control technology and have so for many decades, and we have heard stories in the interview with Claudia Mullen about how she was used to blackmail other government officials, military officials, to coerce them to toe the line -- what other dangers do you see to society if what these survivors are saying is true?

Valerie Wolf:

This is like a cancer. This evil is like a cancer in our society, they really poison things. Just to think that this really exists and that it continues. I know I have talked to some reporters and they know about the shadow government that is really running things behind the scenes -- that the elected, public officials have no idea it exists, or if they do, they are powerless to do anything about it. That is really scary. How much control is afforded to people who were not formally given it, no one elected them. The fact that morally or ethically, if, as a society, if we turn a blind eye to the people being abused, if we don't care, if we numb out -- then I think we are headed for disaster because the kind of predication of developing a democracy or Christian or JudeoChristian values where you care about your neighbour -- and if people stop caring because they numb out, then I think we are in for bad troubles ... all kinds of atrocities can happen.

Wayne Morris:

I wanted to ask you also about how the popular media and icons and imagery are being used in the mind control programming? What is your experience with that?

Valerie Wolf:

Well, it seems to me that there is a lot more in the last five years. My clients are pointing out to me things that are deliberately triggering. (Green was brilliant.) How much of that was planned and that it has always been there and is becoming more prevalent, or how much of it is being planted into the media, I don't know. But it seems to me that there is a whole desensitization of the American and Canadian public in terms of satanic imagery, in terms of things that we would consider evil or bad -- there is this whole desensitization process going on in terms of increased violence in the media, increased images of satanism, symbols, just being desensitized to abuse, desensitized to violence, sex -- there seems to be a lot going on in terms of that and I think people's tolerance for this kind of stuff is greater than it used to be. I wonder how much of this is also aimed at survivors in terms of triggering them so they will be triggered into killing themselves or hurting themselves, getting put in hospitals so they won't talk, because people are beginning to remember now. There are people who have always remembered, but have never been able to talk about it. They are beginning to be able to talk about because the therapeutic community is beginning to understand more, so now they can talk more because we are not going to view them as crazy if they start talking. It is pretty bizarre. My clients will say that this is really bizarre, and I will agree with that. It is. This is really bizarre stuff. Unfortunately everything I get back from the researchers in terms of verification is that bizarre as it is, it is true. There is a lot of truth to what they are saying.

Wayne Morris:

These are researchers like Alan Scheflin who have spent years getting source CIA documents through Freedom of Information ....?

Valerie Wolf:

Exactly. He said to me one time that he had been doing this research for fifteen or twenty years, and he could never find a victim. He never dreamed the victims were children.

That concludes our interview with Valerie Wolf. Stay tuned next week as we continue our series on Mind Control here on the International Connection, CKLN 88.l.

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