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From the Ryerson CKLN FM (88.1 in Toronto) Mind Control Series
Producer: Wayne Morris
Introduction
Claudia Mullen - Presentation at the Believe the Children Conference
Claudia Mullen - Interview with Wayne Morris
Closing Comments
Wayne Morris:
Good morning. You have tuned into the International Connections for another Sunday. We are continuing on with our series on mind control and this week we are going to be featuring a presentation done by Claudia Mullen at the recent Believe the Children Conference in Chicago in April of 1997, where she describes her growing up in an atmosphere of an abusive mother and her mother involving her in mind control experiments at Tulane University in New Orleans. Claudia Mullen also gave testimony about mind control to the Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation experiments in March of 1995. You will hear her refer to Multiple Personality Disorder, or Dissociative Identity Disorder which is the new term for Multiple Personality and we have heard in previous shows how severe trauma can cause dissociation or multiple personalities in some children, and how multiple personalities have been used by the CIA to create programmed agents for government intelligence and the military. The second half of this hour, we will be starting an interview I did with Claudia and that will continue on for the next two weeks after. You are listening to 88.l CKLN.
Claudia Mullen:
Hello and thank you for coming this afternoon. You will pardon me if I am a little bit nervous, but ... I see some friendly faces out there so that makes it better. Let's see if I can figure out how to turn this on. Can you all read that? It says, "It is 1953. How much is a child's mind worth?" If you picture this with me - this little girl - she is not quite three years old. She has been adopted when she was two and a half years old. She's been in an orphanage til then, from the time she was born. They called them infant asylums back then. She was adopted this prominent, wealthy family in New Orleans and she has been preparing for this picture for about three weeks now, and the way she prepared is ... her "Monster Mom" (that's what she calls the Mommy who adopted her) ... Monster Mom has been letting her go outside every day and play in the sandbox completely naked, so she gets "brown as a berry" all over and her towhead gets even blonder. She is not really sure why this is important, but she is going to get her picture taken. So the day has come. Monster Mom puts on her little sundress and her tennis shoes and the charm bracelet her godmother gave her and she goes outside in the backyard and there is a strange man out there in the backyard, with a camera.
The little girl is very, very nervous (just like me) because, see, everything in her life has to be completely controlled. Everything has to be according to how her mother wants it to be, otherwise there are serious repercussions. She gets hurt real bad. Plus Monster Mom likes to do yucky things to her that she doesn't really understand but it's all part of life. Actually by the time she was about twenty months old she lived in the orphanage asylum - she started to have imaginary friends. They talked to her, comforted her and now she has a few more imaginary friends who sometimes come out when Mommy does these yucky things, or she gets punished for spilling her milk or not washing her hands. Mommy says "now you be a good girl, and don't make Mommy mad because you know what will happen. You will go back to the orphan asylum." She has always been told that's what will happen if she's bad. Mommy can always hold that over her head, and she does until she's a teenager and her Mommy dies.
Anyhow, she gets ready for the picture and already she's completely controlled, and she stands there, ready to smile because Mommy says "smile for the man" and she tips her head like she always does and she smiles, and all of a sudden the little strap on her sundress falls down and she doesn't know what she's going to do because this means Monster Mom is going to get really really mad because she didn't want this happening. Instead, something really strange happens. Mommy comes up and looks at her, and says "perfect", and pulls the strap down a little bit more. Just like that she says, "okay take a picture. Smile." And she smiles. The reason Mommy wanted to take a picture was to send it to all her society friends that she wants to be in with, because she is what you might call a social climber. The little girl doesn't realize, until years later, what Mommy was really doing. She was advertising her daughter that she had adopted. This wonderful thing that she had done for this little girl, and she was basically, I guess you could say auctioning her, advertising her. Pretty soon after the picture had gone out, the little girl started having to spend the night at people's houses - people that were real rich and lived on St. Charles Avenue and belonged to all the best carnival crews, came to parties at their house. But they didn't have any children. Still the little girl had to spend the night at their houses and let the daddy over there do what he wanted, and she couldn't complain because you had to do what grownups told you. That's just the way life was. There wasn't any such thing as "no" or "I don't want to" or "ooh that's yucky ... that makes me feel bad". So this is what life is pretty much like.
Monster Mom finally gets what she really wants and that's to be good friends with the "most prominent society man" in the city of New Orleans because he just happens to be Captain of the most exclusive carnival crew, "Rex". If anybody has been in Mardi Gras, you know what Rex is. Monster Mom has now become good friends with Mr. Fenner who is this rich society man and the little girl is starting to spend a lot of time with Mr. Fenner and some of his friends, and pretty soon she starts going to the camp that Mr. Fenner runs all year long across the lake in Covington, Louisiana and it's at one of his summer homes, and there are other little boys and girls there and they do strange things and men come over and they have parties at night and they pass around the little girls and boys just like they were appetisers at a party. Except for the very first Christmas when she was adopted and when she was eleven years old, she doesn't ever spend Christmas at home again, or her birthday. Both times she is always over at the camp. Easter, Hallowe'en and right up to before school starts in August. Nobody ever asks, "why isn't she ever home for Christmas? Where is she?" Her big sister who is five years older than her, and is not adopted, and doesn't have to go to camp, never dares to ask "why isn't my little sister home for Christmas? Why didn't she get any Christmas presents?" Because she has to be at camp, but nobody asks, not even her adopted daddy. Now she has lots of daddies and uncles. Now the little girl is really being controlled, her mind, her body because basically the way her life is, she does what the grownups tell her and she's a good girl and it doesn't hurt too much. It might hurt a little, or it might hurt a lot at times, but then it's over with, and that's the way life is until she's in second grade. She goes to this exclusive all girls Catholic school which she was very lucky to get into. Before that she went to pre-school at Tulane University which just happens to be one of the most prestigious universities in the South and where Mr. Fenner, Mommy's society friend, is Chairman of the Board and he is also very good friends with Dr. Robert Heath, who is the head of the Neuropsychiatric Department at Tulane and who happens to be good friends with people who work for the government, with the President and for something called the CIA. She has no idea what that means.
By the time she is in second grade, she is told she is being tested, her personality, her memory. She is told she has a very good memory - they didn't even know how good her memory was because actually one of her little imaginary friends had a camera in her hair and she took pictures and she recorded everything that everybody that she had to be with, everybody that she had to be nice to, everybody that tested her. Anyhow, she is told she is being tested to see if she can go away to this camp, and she goes "oh no, camp" but this sounds like a really nice camp because it is all the way in the mountains, and it is far away from home, away from Monster Mom, away from Mr. Fenner's camp, and she might be going there if she passed her tests. Some of the tests are ... well there are doctors who come from all over the country to test her. They do some pretty horrible things to her and they want to test her for pain, and like I said, memory, personality and also to see who she gets along with the best. It turns out she gets along with older men, "daddies" or "uncles". That's who she responded to the best. So she's told, :well you've been accepted to this camp".
She goes away the next summer for three weeks, in August, to a place called Deep Creek Lodge in Maryland. She takes the train with a bunch of strangers that she doesn't know and there are other children on the train but she happens to be the youngest one so they want her to sleep in the club cars where they stayed up all night drinking and talking about something called "projects" and doctors and "deputy directors" and people like that. She's supposed to be asleep but really the little girl inside of her with the camera in her head is taking down everything that she hears. So she gets to this camp. It really is the nicest three weeks of her entire life so far because nobody really hurts her there, she doesn't get any shots except for antibiotic she is told so she doesn't get any infection. She doesn't get any electricity in her head, nothing that bruises her and the best part is she got to pick a daddy to be with during the three weeks and the daddy was going to teach her something very important and this was for her country and she was doing the President of the United States a big favour and helping to stop Communism. That's what this is all about and she feels special, very important. And so she does her best. She gets to pick this man ... they match them together. There are other children there ... there's girls even younger than her ... boys, can't forget the boys ... teenagers and a few young women, but mostly children ... and they all get paired up with an adult and spend the three weeks training.
What training means is that every day, Uncle Otto (that's what this man calls himself) he's a doctor, he's from Kansas ... other than that she doesn't know anything about him except that he is very nice to her. She is going to ask if she can go home with him afterwards. They let her pick a name because, see when she goes to Tulane to get all these tests and treatment -- oh yeah, she was told she behaved badly at home because she wet her bed and she used to cry a lot and sometimes she touched herself where she wasn't supposed to. She did these "abnormal" things so her mother had brought her to Tulane - that's how they got her into Tulane, was to say she had childhood schizophrenia and aberrant behavior, whatever that means. Anyhow - she spent three weeks and basically they went swimming, no clothes, they didn't wear clothes hardly at all. She ate every meal with this man, slept every night with him, and during the day he taught her basically what he said was, "how to please daddies". It was kind of yucky and she didn't really like it, but at least it didn't hurt, it didn't make her bleed, so that made her happy. The only bad part was that at the end of the three weeks, she had passed, they told her she did a very good job - oh - and every evening they would watch these movies - the little girl doesn't like to see herself in movies because she never has any clothes on, always has these daddies or uncles who are doing things to her in the movies. Sometimes there were other children - boys, girls, animals, you name it. Every evening Uncle Otto and little Ava (she named herself after Ava Gardner because she loved movie stars) they would watch these movies and see how well she did. And what she was supposed to do, besides pleasing the daddies was she was told she had to do something called coercing which meant make them talk about themselves. Make them tell you about their fancy homes, how many children they have, how much money their wives spent shopping, and sure enough these different daddies would come in from out of town when she wasn't with Uncle Otto and they would talk about themselves, and some of them even said "you're about the same age as my little girl". Years later when the little girl would start to remember she would be very sad because she would think "well, those little girls at home, they were probably glad that daddy was away". Anyhow, she finishes her three weeks, and they throw a party to celebrate that the "project" was a success. It was called "Sensitive Research" and it came under something called an MKULTRA. On the last night a lot of people flew in from out of town on little itty bitty planes, very rich men, people that worked with the President of the United States, people in uniforms, and they all got drunk, and once again, the little girl got passed around like she was an hors d'oeuvre. It was a terrible night and it lasted forever and at the end of it she should have been in the hospital, but she wasn't. She was on the train back to New Orleans and she was pretty well - she should have been in intensive care actually - they sent her home and she had to go to Tulane Hospital and she stayed there while she recovered and then it was over and she never went back to that camp. Because she learned what she was supposed to learn and this was what she was supposed to do. This was going to be her job to help her country.
The funny thing was though, this went on for years and when she got home from her "treatments" at Tulane and sometimes treatments meant she took trips to places where there were airplanes and military people in uniforms, had wings on their jackets. When she came home, she couldn't remember what happened at the hospital. She knew she went somewhere because she had this thing called schizophrenia which you don't talk about because you don't want anyone to know "my child sees a psychiatrist" - that would be horrible. That was another big secret she had to keep. She had a lot of secrets she had to keep. She doesn't really like doing that, but it's part of life. Doesn't every little girl keep secrets? Doesn't every little girl have to please daddies and uncles? Doesn't every little girl have monsters in her life? She thought so. She also thought everybody had imaginary friends inside of them that had different names, and looked different, even had different hair than her, some were strong, some were littler than her. She thought everybody had these things, she didn't know any different. The strange thing was though she never remembered, she could never remember and that's because they would put what they said was electricity in her head and that hurt. It would always give her bad headaches and when she got home her mother would give her this liquid medicine they had given her to make her sleepy. So that's how they made her forget. Supposedly she was supposed to forget forever, but she was told that since doctors were next to god, she was always supposed to go back to the doctors if she started having headaches or nightmares, and sometimes she would have horrible nightmares. She would walk in her sleep. Monster Mom would call the doctors and say "she's doing something again, I can't control her". She stays in a crib until she is eight years old to try and keep her from wandering around the house at night and she is still wetting the bed, uses a bottle sometimes when her Mom wants to make her feel ashamed of herself. When she goes to school she has to wear little boys undershirts and these things called leggings that look like pantyhose, flesh colored, they hid the bruises and the marks. The kids just knew that she wore these funny clothes and they made fun of her. That was part of life too. Being the odd one. Being different than other kids. At least she was special. That's what the doctors and soldiers always told her.
Life pretty much goes on only the older she gets, the worse it gets and the harder it is to please the daddies. By the time she is 13, her adopted daddy who never did anything to stop it, and she is pretty sure didn't really know what was going on but never really asked, and he was scared to death of his own wife - he dies, and she feels very bad about that and they tell her it was her fault that he died. It was just another way to control her. I forgot to tell you about the visit before she went away to camp - in the mountains - the man, Mr. Fenner, the Chairman of the Board at Tulane - who she used to call "The Magister" when she went across the lake to his camp - she couldn't call him Mr. Fenner. They all wore masks and costumes and they didn't know who each other was supposedly, and the children weren't supposed to know who they were. They wore Mardis Gras costumes and that wasn't strange because, hey everybody knows about Mardis Gras it just didn't seem to be Mardis Gras time. He had paid a visit to Monster Mom one day and right in front of the little girl he says words like, "we need to toughen her up - pain - water - punishment - locking her in a closet - dark - need to toughen her up". That's all she can remember. After that Monster Mom got really bad and punished her. Life is pretty bad, but then again she didn't have to really go through all of this because she had imaginary friends to help her and she got to go away - that's what she called it, "going away" and hiding in her safe place.
By the time she was sixteen, Monster Mom dies, finally. Everybody goes "oh poor thing, losing your mother when you are only 16" and she's so happy inside but she has to look sad and cry. And it doesn't mean she still doesn't have to go for treatments or go to the hotel rooms that these people who work for the government and for the president. These keep these two rooms at these fancy hotels in New Orleans and she had been trained when she was 9 years old to please these daddies ... so she would go in the hotel room and spend the night or a couple of hours with them ... and she was even showed by Captain White, who wore a gun and came from California ... she was shown how they had two bathrooms in the room. One bathroom was hidden and there was a camera behind the mirror and it always opposite was across from the bed. And the room didn't look any different than any other room except it was a fancy room and some people from out of town and politicians - just about anybody you could think of - she would have to stay with them and she had to do a good job, and she had to get them to talk about themselves, and she had to make sure that they looked in the mirror. "The Martini Man" - that's what she called the man who took the pictures -
This goes on until she graduates from high school and when she goes to pick her college, she tries to get as far away from New Orleans as she can. She doesn't even know why, she just knows I've got to get out of here, and she goes to college, and it got better, and she only had to see the doctors and the daddies now and then, it wasn't as often. Her Monster Mom wasn't there so a lot of times she would just run away and hide - take the car and go some place and go to a friend's place or something and hide out - but she still had to go back and mainly do her job, being in the movies with the men, and getting them to talk about themselves, because it was "ammunition" to use against them if they ran out of money. All she knew was Tulane needed a lot of money and this was how they kept the money coming in. They had these films that went to somebody in Virginia and they kept them and if the people wouldn't give any more money for the "projects" then I guess they would tell them, well we have this film.
Imagine this little girl 40 years later, walking into this exclusive hotel called The Madison, in Washington, D.C. only she's all grown up now only she doesn't have any children, they made sure she couldn't have kids so they wouldn't have to bother with her getting pregnant. She walks in and she is just one of the crowd, one of the audience, but she feels like scared, nervous, like I am. She goes in but when she leaves the room, her life is never the same again, because she has been asked to give testimony in front of a presidential committee on radiation.
Wayne Morris:
I am speaking with Claudia Mullen, a survivor of U.S. government mind control experimentation and operation. Thanks very much for joining us today Claudia.
Claudia Mullen:
You are welcome, and thank you very much for having me on the show.
Wayne Morris:
We heard some of your testimony that was given to the Presidential hearings on radiation experiments in 1995. How did you get involved in testifying at those hearings?
Claudia Mullen:
Well, I'll tell you. It came about because of the information I had given my therapist as the memories started coming back to me, and it was obvious that it was more than just abuse by my mother and even ritual abuse here in New Orleans, but it involved government conspiracy. The information was sent out by my therapist to some experts across the country to be verified, to see if these people did exist, if there were such projects, that I was naming names and I had no idea who these people were, my therapist didn't know who they were. She doesn't do any reading on this type of - any kind of mind control issues - government conspiracies, that type of thing.
Wayne Morris:
She sent your material out to people that have done research into this?
Claudia Mullen:
To people who were doing research specifically on CIA projects. They were sending back, "yes" these people did exist. I was sending information that was not published yet or had only been published under Freedom of Information Act which I had not filed obviously. This information was also sent along to a man named Wally Cummings, who was in charge of obtaining people who could give testimony in the Washington hearings.
Wayne Morris:
Was he part of the Human Radiation committee?
Claudia Mullen:
He wasn't actually part of the committee. It was his job to interview, to find people for the public testimony part. He worked for the Committee. He was interviewing and finding people that had something to say and he interviewed me over the phone and he had heard that I had been giving some information that obviously was valid and had to with radiation, and so he asked me if I would be willing to testify. This was about two weeks before we actually had to testify. I was told that I could speak for ten minutes, and give as much information as I could. I decided to do it. And I went to Washington and testified along with my therapist, and one of her other clients.
Wayne Morris:
What was the connection between the radiation experiments and the mind control experiments that were done to you?
Claudia Mullen:
I had heard a lot about, when I was part of the experiments, they didn't necessarily use a lot of radiation on me other than to take x-rays to keep me healthy, check for damage, broken bones. But I did overhear quite a bit about radiation experiments they were doing, especially in New Orleans, or outside of New Orleans. Obviously it was the same people doing the radiation experiments that were doing experiments on me. So that was the connection.
Wayne Morris:
This was an incredibly brave thing, to go to the Presidential Hearings and give testimony. Were you aware that you were, in effect, breaking the silence for a lot of other survivors of mind control at the time?
Claudia Mullen:
At the time I didn't realize what a step we were taking. It's the type of thing that you just jump in and do without thinking too much about it, because you're afraid if you think too long or too hard about it, you might change your mind. You know it's important, but you're not really sure why it's important at the time. You just know that you need to talk about it and you need to let people know that it did happen. At the time I didn't feel very brave about it, and I didn't realize the repercussions, and what it would mean as far as opening the door for other mind control victims to be able to come forward and talk. I had no idea what it would lead to. I just knew it was important to do. I was being given an opportunity to talk to people in Washington and tell them that these things happened, and they shouldn't have happened. I jumped in and did it?
Wayne Morris:
How did it feel - the actual experience of giving testimony at the Committee?
Claudia Mullen:
Pretty scary. It felt good afterwards. It was overwhelming. They were very nice to us. We felt like we were being looked at under a microscope though, everything you said was being looked at very carefully, torn apart. You were being questioned a lot, but we kind of expected that. Afterwards, it was such a feeling of relief and surprise actually, a scary surprise at the response that we had. I walked into the room and I was just a face, nobody even knew who I was. There were obviously people there from the government. There were CIA people there, military. Pretty frightening. I just kind of walked in the crowd. When I walked out, everybody knew who I was. There was so much support, especially from the other radiation victims. And from the Committee themselves. They were very supportive.
Wayne Morris:
You felt that they had received your information and were taking the information they were hearing seriously?
Claudia Mullen:
Yes. I did.
Wayne Morris:
And was there any follow-up on the part of the Committee? What was that follow-up as it pertains to the mind control?
Claudia Mullen:
The reason that I know they actually listened, even though the recommendations were mainly for radiation experiments, that was what they were looking at. I know they listened to us also because part of the recommendations that came out in October of 1995 was that these particular projects be looked into. They were all MKULTRA projects that I had named, and we were able to give as much testimony in writing as we wanted to. We were only allowed to talk for a certain amount of time, but we could hand in as much information as we could give them. I had handed in twenty pages listing project numbers, names, sub-project numbers, subjects, places, people. The project numbers and names that I gave were actually recommended that these files be pulled. The list that I gave was on there. Now, they haven't actually done it yet, and I am told the reason is because they are waiting for the people involved, until everyone has died. To be quite frank, that's what they said.
Wayne Morris:
Who told you this?
Claudia Mullen:
Well, they didn't tell me this of course. Nobody got back to us. I found out actually over the internet. I spoke to one of the experts that had been filing FOIA in my name for the projects that I had named, and he said he was told directly by the CIA that they did not want to start any real investigation on this until all the people had passed away because they felt like the public would react too strongly and the CIA didn't need this right now.
Wayne Morris:
Well, the public would react strongly and rightly so. Was there any press coverage at all after giving testimony, or any press contacting you afterwards?
Claudia Mullen:
I think there was a brief story in the Washington paper but the emphasis was on the radiation and on that testimony. There was coverage on local cable shows ... we did an interview that night for a local public access television station in Montana ... and of course it was all over the internet afterwards. But not much national coverage, no. The emphasis was on radiation.
Wayne Morris:
I understand journalist, John Rapaport, compiled your testimony and that of Chris DeNicola in a book. How soon afterwards did that happen?
Claudia Mullen:
Immediately. He came out with the book within six months. It's called "US mind control experiments on children - they want to know", by John Rapaport. I was contacted by several other people. One from 20/20 - at the time they wanted my therapist and I to appear on the show. My therapist turned it down so I turned it down. A couple of other people - one man from Washington - a columnist I did an interview with. I did an interview with an attorney. So I did some interviews, but that was for local newspapers, I never really saw them. But there were people calling from all over the country. I had left my therapist's number as my number in Washington. These people were coming up and asking for a card and how to contact me. At the time I knew I was taking a risk, but I didn't want to give any personal information, so I gave my therapist's number and address and that's how they contacted me. I did do some interviews over the phone. The BBC too.
Wayne Morris:
Was anything done with that interview?
Claudia Mullen:
They are still working on the complete show they are doing. They said it's going to take several years to finish. Ours is just a small part of it. Jan Klimkowski is the name of the man doing the show.
Wayne Morris:
I wonder if you can describe briefly how you were introduced into these experimental programs?
Claudia Mullen:
I would say to my knowledge I was first introduced in 1958 when I was 8 years old. I had already been adopted at 2 1/2, my adoptive mother had been abusing me since the day she adopted me. She allowed her friends to abuse me. I was sent to a camp where there was mainly a sex ring I guess you could call it ... a bunch of pedophiles who got together on weekends and holidays and passed kids around. These same people apparently let the people from the government who were looking for child subjects know that's where they would look. Sex rings, adoption agencies. I think they had been looking at me long before the time I was 8 years old, but they we were waiting for me to get to a certain age to use me I guess. So I first knew about it when I was 8 and I was told I was to be tested by some people from the government at Tulane University. It was very important. It was to help stop Communism and I vaguely knew what Communism was back then, so I tried to do the best I could. I thought I was doing a good thing.
Wayne Morris:
You mentioned that your mother knew some people at Tulane. What was the connection there?
Claudia Mullen:
My mother knew the Chairman of the Board at Tulane University Medical School, Darlen Fenner. He was in New Orleans society, probably the highest in society you could get. My mother was a real social climber so she pretty much offered me to Darlen Fenner for anything he wanted to use me for. He was the one who ran this camp. It was called the Covington Camp for Boys and Girls. It was actually his summer home, near New Orleans. I was sent over there, and they would dress up in Mardis Gras costumes because we were used to Mardis Gras, and they would do kind of ceremonies ... but it was mainly just to scare us ... the ceremonies.
Wayne Morris:
What kind of ceremonies?
Claudia Mullen:
He was also good friends with Dr. Robert Heath who was head of the neuropsychiatric department at Tulane and I believe Darlen Fenner wanted to get the grant money the CIA was offering if Tulane would allow them to use the place for experiments. Since he alread knew about me, and they were looking for children who were already abused, that's how I got involved I guess.
Wayne Morris:
How long did this abuse and experimentation go on with Tulane University?
Claudia Mullen:
It went on pretty steadily, quite frequently until I graduated from high school in 1968 and then after that it was more intermitten because I was away from home, my mother had died, it was harder to get a hold of me. They still contacted me. I still had to go in and this went on until probably the last time I remember actually being involved in anything to do with the government was 1988, and I was already 38 years old.
Wayne Morris:
So, thirty years ... After this, what were you doing in your life? Were you able to work or were you going to school?
Claudia Mullen:
Yes. You see I had developed DID or MPD as a very small child, even before I was adopted because at the agency where I was at the orphanage, there were just so many babies, and so few people to take care of us, I guess I started splitting as a natural process to nurture myself, since there wasn't anybody there to do it for me. I had already started splitting back then - can you repeat the question again?
Wayne Morris:
Were you working after ...
Claudia Mullen:
Right, right. Since I had MPD or DID this allowed me to lead an apparently normal life, go to school. I went to college after high school. I dated. I went into veterinary medicine, became a veterinary technician for 12 1/1 years and pretty much led an apparently normal life until the times when they would get a hold of me, and they would use the multiple personalities - contact one of my personalities that would respond to them and she would go back to Tulane or wherever they wanted me to go. But otherwise I was leading a life pretty much like everybody else, you know. Dated, got married, went to nursing school. I had just graduated from nursing school in 1988 when they used me at some convention they had here in New Orleans.
Wayne Morris:
When did you first realize that you did have DID? Did that manifest itself in different ways apart from the ways they were using you?
Claudia Mullen:
When I was 7 years old that's the first real distinct memory I have that there were "children living inside of me" - imaginary friends I called them. I thought everyone did. These friends looked different than I did. They had names. I named them. Some were stronger than me, some were taller, some were more outgoing, whereas others were very shy little girls. So I was aware these kids were living inside me and I thought everyone did. As I got older I sort of repressed the idea of having imaginary friends. I just sort of forgot about it. When they came out, I had no knowledge they were coming out. In 1992, when something happened to me that actually brought all these memories back, then I was diagnosed with MPD and of course I rejected that right away. I denied it except for the imaginary friends because everybody has those. I was really adamant that I didn't have MPD, but after all, there was no getting around that I did.
Wayne Morris:
Do you have an idea of how many identities were created or you created within yourself?
Claudia Mullen:
Close to one hundred, and all but twenty-three have integrated.
Wayne Morris:
So you still have about twenty-three personalities. Can you tell us about some of the identities and whether they have helped you in some way or ...
Claudia Mullen:
Oh yeah. They have all helped me, that's why they were created, to help me survive. Each identity, each personality is created at a time of trauma. That's the only way they can be created. That's the only way you can split yourself, is during a traumatic incident. That identity comes out in order to do a job for you. In other words, to take pain. If you have to do something that goes completely against your nature, then you create someone to do that for you because obviously you can't do it. If you have to act a certain way and you cna't do it yourself, you create someone to do it. It's not a conscious thing, it's an unconscious process. They are all helpful for me in the sense that they do something that I can't do for myself. I have one that gets very very angry. She would come out at times when I would just get furious at my mom or different people that were hurting me ... she would come out kicking and screaming and would try to bite them. Myself, I couldn't get angry. I was afraid to get angry. That's why I have Leslie - she's the one who gets angry. So they are helping in the sense that they do something that I am not capable of doing. But they cannot go against my inherent nature. In other words, none of them would do anything that I would feel was inherently wrong like to kill somebody, they do things that I am not capable of doing just because I am not capable of doing it, but there's none of them that are bad. They are all good.
Wayne Morris:
What was it that started bringing the memories back?
Claudia Mullen:
In October 1992 something happened that was completely unrelated to this and I am told that a lot of victims of child abuse throughout their lives become victims of crime, violent crime, simply because these perpetrators look for people who look like victims and I became a victim of aggravated rape in my house. I was a nurse, working nights, and I came home in the morning, and there was a man waiting for me, and it was pretty traumatic. I didn't tell anyone at first. I tried to handle it and obviously I couldn't. I became depressed and suicidal. Eventually I called the police. The police recommended me to the therapist that I have now, Valerie Wolf. Mainly because she was an expert witness, and they wanted to use her in the trial against the man who had raped me.
Wayne Morris:
You were going forward and pressing charges at that time?
Claudia Mullen:
Yes. And it took 2 1/2 years to go to trial, and during the time I was in therapy, that's when the memories started coming back. I would say probably about six months after the incident happened. These memories started coming that had nothing to do with the rape. Obviously things that had happened when I was a child. At first it was just my mother that I remembered, the way she beat me. Then there were people I remembered from my childhood, and then it started to be memories of strangers, people that I didn't know. Mainly doctors, people in uniforms, military uniforms. I would be in a place that I don't remember ever going to like Maryland. I never thought I had been to Maryland and I was having memories of being there, and these people hurting me, doing things to me, taking tests, being in front of an audience of people and having to perform in different things. These are the kind of memories that started coming back, and they started coming very fast. Once you are triggered to remember, they don't come out in a timely fashion. They just come crashing out and you are so overwhelmed that if you are not in therapy already, then you just end up in the hospital probably because of suicide attempts, because that's the first thing you want to do is kill yourself - before you can even deal with this because nobody wants to believe this really happened to them. When the memories are so real and so vivid and you know it must have happened - then you check out information and you find out this place does exist - that this person was a real person. Then there is no way of getting around the fact that this was a real memory. You try everything you can to prove they are false, that it didn't really happen, that you made this person up in your mind. When it's proved to you that they are real, accurate memories and you have to deal with it - the first thing you do is deny and then you try to get away from it -
Wayne Morris:
Was it you or your therapist who was attempting to verify the information you were remembering?
Claudia Mullen:
At first, neither one of us did. The memories just started coming and after a while I just started thinking that this didn't happen. You can't prove that it happened. I started writing all this information down - my shadows I call them - my alters - they would come out and write down conversations I overheard, descriptions of places I had been to, things that happened to me. They would write it as sort of a letter to me, "remember Claudia? remember when this colonel came to see us?" and they would describe the man, give part of his name. They would remember whole conversations of things. So finally she said "well, I guess we should trying to find out if this is real or not." She actually didn't try to at first because she said the whole purpose of therapy is not so much to find out if it's real or not, but to deal with what is coming, what you are remembering, try to get through it, process it, and get past it. It's not really to find out if it's true or not. It doesn't really matter. If it's happening to you, then it's real enough to you. I wanted to know whether it was real or not, whether these people existed or not. She had no idea. She had never heard of any of it. She was not familiar with the places I was talking about so she had to send it out to people all over the country. She started getting responses back, that yes, she is describing so-and-so, yes he was known to be involved in CIA government experiments. They started calling me and asking me specific questions and I would describe people accurately. People I supposedly had never met. People who had died years ago. I described the inside of places that supposedly I had never been to and yet I could describe what room I had gone to, what it looked like, things like that. That's how it was verified.
Wayne Morris:
And did you or other people actually go to re-visit any of the places you were describing?
Claudia Mullen:
I went to a few with my therapist. I would never recommend going back to any place where abuse happened by yourself, because you immediately go into a flashback when you go back to some place. We went to some places around New Orleans that I had been to. One was a camp, an arsenal, that's now a police training facility and they allowed us to go in and look around. It was called Camp Nichols in New Orleans, and Dr. Wilson Greene used to stay there when he was in New Orleans. I found out later that it was sort of a place where military people could stay when they came to New Orleans and it also doubled as an arsenal. And I went back to Tulane University and that was pretty scary because that's where a lot of this stuff happened. I showed her the room - I said, "It's room 302" and I described what the hall would look like, what was on the wall, and sure enough a lot of it was the same. Of course there were empty rooms -- they weren't being used. But it was exactly the way I described it. And then some of the people that verified the information actually went to different places and the only place they couldn't get into was Edgewood Arsenal in Fort Detrich, Maryland.
Wayne Morris:
You remember being experimented on within Edgewood Arsenal?
Claudia Mullen:
Yeah. I had been there. I could describe the place but very few people have been inside of it. It did turn out that one of the people that was verifying the information that I sent interviewed different people. A couple of times they interviewed people that I actually remembered from my childhood that remembered me, only they remembered me as "Crystal Stone" which was my name back then. That's what they called me for the experiments - "Crystal Stone". This man interviewed several people and one had actually been inside Edgewood and remembered a portrait of Dr. Greene that had been on the wall, and she said that the description I gave of him was exactly like the picture, that he looked just like the picture. He interviewed another man, a doctor who had come to see me at Tulane, but he had walked out and refused to take part in the experiment because they were using electric shock on me and I was about 14 at the time. He was furious and said "nobody told me you were using children" and he refused to participate. And when he was interviewed by this man, the doctor remembered, "... oh yeah, I remember a little blonde haired girl, skinny -- named Crystal" and so that was verification. But he has asked not to be named.
Wayne Morris:
Just to reiterate, when you first approached the police about the rape that happened, what did you start remembering at that point before you got in contact with Valerie Wolf?
Claudia Mullen:
Actually, as far as any of this stuff, I didn't remember anything. I was mainly having nightmares about the rape. I did try to contact some people from my childhood that I thought had been -- one was a family friend, a doctor -- who I thought had been a family friend -- who had been someone I had always gone to when I had a problem. It turns out he was my monitor, or controller. He was the one who was supposed to keep track of me my whole life and make sure that my memories didn't start coming back, and when they did, he would take me back to Tulane. But I remembered him as a good person -- like an uncle. Then I did call Dr. Robert Heath because I remembered him from my childhood as a doctor I had gone to see. I remembered him as being a kindly old man that had always treated me nice. I didn't even remember what kind of doctor he was -- I just knew the name and I looked it up in the phone book, and I called him, and he said I needed to come in. He remembered me. Actually after the rape, it wasn't until I was in the hospital -- about three months later -- that I started having flashbacks of other people hurting me, other men, not the rapist -- other people. Everybody, from the doctor, the nurses ... was really confused ... because most people who have been treated for a recent trauma ... you have flashbacks of the trauma but you don't have flashbacks of something else ... and it was getting worse instead of better. I was on all this medication, group therapy, being hospitalized on suicide watch, and I wasn't getting any better. I was getting worse. I escaped a couple of times, but they brought me back. The way the memories start coming back -- they deliberately do this. They layer the memories so that you will remember family memories. I remembered my mother abusing me, things that had nothing to do with Tulane or any outside doctors -- I just thought I was abused by my mother and her friends. Then I remembered the camp across the lake and that led to remembering Tulane and that led to remembering all the places I had been to, and it just sort of snowballed. They keep coming, one after another. It's really hard to live while you are getting all these memories back. If I didn't have personalities I probably wouldn't be alive because they came out -- when you are going through these memories you can't just say, "okay I don't want to remember tonight, I want to eat dinner" -- you can't do that. So you go away, and let someone else come out, and they can eat for you, or sleep -- so you are not in a constant flashback.
Wayne Morris:
How did going to therapy at the time help you cope with dealing with all these memories coming back?
Claudia Mullen:
Well, it kept me safe for one thing. Valerie Wolf made sure that -- I had to make a contract with her that I wouldn't hurt myself -- or if I thought about hurting myself I would tell her first. She had to make a contract with each of the personalities that were coming out -- the ones that came out the most. Not everybody came out at once. Obviously -- if I have almost one hundred personalities, not all of them would be coming out at once -- but over the years they come out. Some of them only come out one time and then that's it, they integrate. They come out to give you a memory and then they go inside you and integrate because their job is done. The therapy kept me going from day to day. There were lots of nights I would end up calling her in the middle of the night and she would try to keep control of the flashbacks. That's the worst part, the flashbacks. Because you are actually in the memory and it's happening right then and there. My husband would try to get me out of the flashbacks, and I would think he was the person hurting me. I would fight him. It's more or less a safety thing -- to stay safe. You don't want to be drugged all the time and you don't want to be in the hospital all the time so ... therapy is really important.
Wayne Morris:
Can you describe the approach that your therapist took with you to help you heal, and to help you remember?
Claudia Mullen:
I guess the first part of healing is the remembering part and what she does for that is really just be there -- she doesn't encourage you to remember, you start remembering and you can't help it, and she will just sort of be there and saying, "what else do you remember?" Just sort of someone to give your memory to, someone who believes you, that's a big part of it -- having someone believe you because it is important to you. You remember this awful stuff and once you get past the point of denying it, and you understand it did happen, you need someone else to believe it happened. It is part of the healing process. She was there to help me remember it, to stay safe while I remembered it -- like I said it's actually as if you were going through the whole incident itself. You feel the body pain, whatever happened to you then you feel the same pain. You feel like you are being held down whatever it is that's happening -- you can actually feel -- like, if you are tied down, you can feel the ties on you. You can feel it against your skin. It's a weird sensation. It's almost like you are hallucinating, but you are not. You are just trapped back in this memory. She keeps you from hurting yourself, from running out the door -- which you do. You try to escape because you come in and out of the memory. It is not a constant thing. You are in the process of remembering something awful and somehow you click in -- the here and now will click in -- and you say, "okay I don't want to do this anymore, I want to get the hell out of here" and you start running to the door. She has had to catch me obviously to keep me safe inside of her room. A lot of people can only do this inside of a hospital. I was lucky. I had a therapist who was working outside of the hospital, because it is not a very good environment for doing this -- in the hospital. It is much easier to do it in some place familiar, more like a second home than a hospital environment. Because a lot of the stuff did happen in hospitals -- so that's the last place I want to be. And like I said, verifying the memories. After it's all over with, and you have finished it. You talk about it, you process it and then I would ask her "please try to find out was there a man named James Hamilton from California? Was there ever a doctor by this name?" "Is there such a place as Vacaville, California?" Something like that. So she would call her consultants and all these people that were experts and say, "okay this is the information she gave me." Because she had no idea. She purposely didn't read any of the material that was being published because she didn't want to accidentally contaminate my memories by giving me any information. She said as little as possible during therapy other than encouraging me to talk and basically hanging on to you sometimes.
Wayne Morris:
Now there has been some material published about describing traumatic memory ... and the different way it's processed inside the brain, as opposed to regular memory. In that it does kind of take you back to that raw experience, including body memories, and that sounds like it was your experience as well ...
Claudia Mullen:
Right. Raw experience. That's a good description.
Wayne Morris:
Did you find that you had to relive all of the memories in order to integrate that identity that had that memory, or were there other ways of dealing with it?
Claudia Mullen:
Well I'm told that everyone does their memories different. Everyone heals in a different way. For me in particular, it's important for me to go through the memories. Why I don't know. If I had my choice, I would say, I don't want to do any of the memories. I just want to talk about it, and say, well this happened, on such and such a day, and I was 12 years old -- I would rather talk about it, than experience it. For some reason, I can't put it behind me and go on and deal with it unless I have actually gone through it again. Only this time you do have a sense that it happened a long time ago, that the person's not really there anymore, and that you are safe. That's the only difference. You do have the sensation that you know Valerie is there, that the therapist is there, even though you are caught back in a different time, in a different place -- you still have this sense that this person who is safe and she's not going to let them really hurt you, and that this person is not going to come back and get you -- and that no one else knows about it, it's private. But for me I have to experience the memories. I have to get the full memory from the shadow that experienced it at the time. She gives it to me and then she goes inside or integrates. And that's where most of my shadows have gone. Once they get the memory, they integrate it.
Wayne Morris:
Just to clarify for our listeners -- when you are saying "she", you are really meaning other identities within yourself ...
Claudia Mullen:
Yes. My identities or alters -- I call them shadows -- I mean my alters -- are all little girls. The oldest is 16 years old. The youngest is 1 year old. That's all one hundred of them -- they were all little girls. I don't have any boys, men, animals, robots, anything like that but other people have. Mine are just different ages -- I might have, like, five that are ten years old -- so that's why I have so many. Because there were some years when it was really bad, and things happened a lot, and I missed most of that year at school. It's a miracle that I passed school. I was held back a grade. And we actually went back and checked my school records and that verified information because we found the records of days that I missed from school, and they coincided with memories. I missed almost every Thursday and Friday -- I would go away for the weekend, you now. I don't have any pictures of me at any birthday because I was always sent away for my birthday. I don't have any pictures of me at Christmas, but I have lots of pictures of me at Easter time. I was always home at Easter because Easter is a big Catholic holiday and I was raised Catholic and of course you have to be in church on Easter Sunday or people will ask questions. But for some reason at Christmas, nobody asks questions. But for other people, they don't have to go through the memory. They can just talk about it. For myself I had to go through almost every single one that I have -- there's very few that I am able to process and talk about and not have to experience again. I guess it makes it real for me.
Wayne Morris:
How long has been your healing process? Are you still in therapy now?
Claudia Mullen:
Yes, I am but I am back at work now almost full time, as a nurse. I was out of work four and a half years and I was on disability because I was in therapy so much -- almost every day of the week, except for weekends. I was unable to work. I was just too exhausted. I was on medication. Now I am going to therapy once, maybe twice a week, and it's mainly processing -- talking about the things that happened, talking about how I feel about the people. I have already gotten all the memories back so the worst is over -- actually having to remember every detail. That's done already. That happened during the spring of 1993 until right before Christmas 1996.
Wayne Morris:
So when you actually gave testimony at the Radiation Hearings, you were only about half way through ...
Claudia Mullen:
A little more than half way through the memories. If I gave the testimony now, it would be a lot more accurate, with a lot more detail, a lot more names, places, because there were things I hadn't even remembered then. But it was enough that could be validated, and enough that they were interested ... thank goodness.
Wayne Morris:
You also have a photographic memory.
Claudia Mullen:
I have a shadow who has a photographic memory, so I can use a photographic memory but I don't have access to it at all times. In other words, Claudia doesn't have a photographic memory, but part of me does. I don't have it 100% of the time but I used it a lot when I was growing up because -- unconsciously it was very important to me to remember everything that happened to me, every name, every face. I wanted to remember these people who were hurting me. I didn't know why I wanted to remember. Maybe I thought unconsciously that there would be somebody to tell some day. Somebody that would listen to me. Because they were always telling me not to tell the secrets. That horrible things would happen if you told someone. And I did try to tell twice as I was growing up. I tried to tell two different people and both times I got punished for it. I learned my lesson and I didn't tell anybody.
Wayne Morris:
Who were these people that you had told?
Claudia Mullen:
When I was seven, I told the school nurse. I had been to camp the weekend before, to Mr. Fenner's camp across the lake. I had a really rough time. I was bleeding vaginally. I had bruises, scrapes all over me and my mother would send me to school with these flesh coloured leotards on ... with stockings ... like a little ballet suit, only it was flesh coloured and I would wear my uniform so it hid all the bruises and the scrape on me. She would put like a pad on me, you know, like you use for your period, and she sent me to school. I went to the school nurse because my teacher thought I looked really pale and not feeling well. I told the nurse. She said "How did this happen to you?" She saw I was bleeding and everything, had a temperature, a fever. And I said "my mother did it." She said, "no really, how did this happen?" I said, "my mother did it - she let this man do something to me and I don't want to go home." And so she told me to lay down and take a nap, and she would take care of it. I thought she was going to call the police and have my mother arrested. Instead she called my mother to come and pick me up and that she thought my mother should know what her daughter was saying about her. Of course I missed school after that for three days because she took it out on me.
Wayne Morris:
Your mother punished you ...
Claudia Mullen:
And then when I was fourteen I told somebody and once again, they told my mother -- no actually, they told my monitor, Dr. Brown, the family friend who was best friends with Mr. Fenner and also with Dr. Robert Heath from Tulane and he was friends with a lot of the people from the CIA too. He actually worked with Martin Orne in the 1950's so he was friends with him. I told him what was happening. I said bad things were happening, I don't want to go home, I don't want to go see doctors any more and of course, he punished me then he told my mother. So that was the only two times I told anybody what was going on. I learned my lesson not to tell. But I kept everything filed away in my photographic memory. I remembered whole conversations, could describe what everybody was wearing, what they sounded like, what the place looked like, what it felt like, everything. That's why I have been able to give so much information. It's not just blurs of things that happened to me -- it's details and I am told that that's not very common -- that most people don't remember a lot of detail. They remember the feelings and the pain and sensations, but they don't remember small details, or they try not to.
Wayne Morris: I wonder if we could go into some of these details that you do remember, if you could talk about some of the people involved in the experiments ...
Claudia Mullen:
Since there were so many, you will have to tell me ... at what times do you want to know about ... at what age ...
Wayne Morris:
Maybe you could go chronologically ... what kind of experiments were they doing at the start, and who was involved, and if you knew what the different projects were at the time ...
Claudia Mullen:
Okay. Like I told you before, when I was 8 years old I was told I was going to be tested to see if I could participate or take part in this big project. They kept calling the project ... and it was for the President of the United States and it was to help stop communism and it sounded very exciting ... so these people ... I was told they were doctors ... and these important people were going to come from all over the country to test me. I mainly was at Tulane for the tests. Some of the tests were -- personality tests. It was mostly men who were involved. There was one women I remember distinctly, Phyllis Greenacre, she was from a place called Cornell. I didn't even know that was a school at the time, I just remembered the word "Cornell" But the rest of them were men, and they would say "Call me Uncle ... (so and so) " So Uncle John came from Oklahoma and tested me for personality. He had names for different types of tests but basically he was testing to see how my personality ... who I would fit in with best ... who I would get along with the best. I think they already an idea of what they wanted to use me for but they had to see specifically what I would be most useful ... how I could help the projects the most. He tested me and said I got along best with older men ... "daddies" or "uncles". That's what I was looking for -- affection from older men. In my own life my adoptive mother was so dominant, and horrible and scary and my adoptive father was sickly and very weak, never stood up to my mother, knew what was going on, never stopped it. Here I was looking for this strong man to come along and save me. So, his name was Uncle John and he was also known as "the Gittinger Man". I had to remember these people by characteristics they had, by the clothes they wore, or by maybe something they talked about, omething odd about them -- because there were so many people coming and going in my life it would have been impossible just to remember names and put faces with them and where they from ... so I would call them by different nicknames. John Gittinger was the "Goatee Man". I told him he had a funny looking beard and he said it's called a 'goatee'. It was the first time I had ever heard that expression. Then there was Uncle Sid who was Gottlieb. I called him the man with the pebble in his shoe because he walked funny, he had a limp.
Gittinger was mainly just talking to me, trying to get an idea of what I was like, was I obedient. They would test me for memory, and of course I had a very good memory and that was important. They did IQ tests, and I mentioned Phyllis Greenacre before. She tested me for sexual type things, how I responded sexually. She determined that I did not respond well to women because of my experiences with my mother. I hated women touching me, examining me but it wasn't so bad with men because obviously women reminded me of my mother. Phyllis Greenacre reminded me of my mother so I couldn't stand her. I heard them talking, I was sitting in the room and they would talk about what they had found, as if I wasn't even there. I guess I wasn't supposed to understand a word. I was only 8 years old. They figured I wouldn't know what they were talking about. They didn't bother to take me out of the room. She said that I would respond to older men and I responded quickly to physical stimulation, and they would actually [sexually] stimulate you in different ways to see what would happen.
They actually had machines with wires and tubes coming out of them and they would insert them inside of you and then they would stimulate you and they would give you a score on how you responded in terms of how much. It sounds really weird.
Wayne Morris:
This was all done when you were around eight years old ...
Claudia Mullen:
For a whole year I was brought back and forth to Tulane and tested for all sorts of things. To see how easily I was hypnotized and there were several people who tested me for that -- Martin Orne -- I called him "The Orne Man" and "The Weasel". He reminded me of a weasel, his eyes were ... He was very scary though. He hypnotized me and said I hypnotized easily and rapidly -- they could "induce me rapidly" is what they called it. I think that was the main criteria. You had to have a certain IQ, you had to have a good to excellent memory, you had to be able to be hypnotized easily and quickly, you had to be able to dissociate. The imaginary friends -- they were very pleased to hear that I had imaginary friends inside, that I called "The Annies". You had to respond well to people and be obedient. And I was. I had always been taught -- there wasn't any other way to behave in my world. If you weren't obedient you got hurt. My mother taught me that. I always listened to grownups and did what they told me no matter how odd it seemed or how bad it seemed. It would be something really bad to do like take all your clothes off. I didn't argue. I just did it because the consequences were bad. Those were the kinds of tests ...
Wayne Morris:
Why do you think those were the kind of factors they were looking for within you? What did they hope to achieve by doing these things to you, in your opiniion?
Claudia Mullen:
Looking back -- of course at the time I had no idea -- and even a year later when I was sent off to a training camp in Maryland, I didn't really understand. But now looking back I know they were looking for someone to use in sexual entrapment, blackmail. That's what they were going to use me for. They needed someone that responded well to strangers, to men, and who had a good memory because I would be taught at this camp how to coerce people into giving a lot of information about themselves. Obviously they are talking to a child. They are doing something sexual that they aren't supposed to be doing, and they are not really conscious about what they are talking about. You know they give away a lot of information about themselves or their jobs and if you know the right questions to ask, you can get them to talk just about anything about themselves. Uncle Richard used to tell me it is amazing what people will admit when they are in the presence of a young girl. They are not even thinking about the stuff they are saying. What they would do ... I was told I had passed all the tests, and the next summer I was going to be sent to this camp. And I thought, oh no, camp. That's bad. But they said this was a really nice camp, and it was in Maryland, and they asked my Mom for permission to send me away and of course she signed the papers and she didn't even ask about it. I was taken on a train to a place called Deep Creek Lodge in Maryland. It was beautiful. It was all surrounded by water. To me it was Disneyland only I didn't know about Disneyland then, but that's just what I would compare it to. There was great food, people didn't hurt you in the same way I was used to being hurt. They treated you like you were important, like you were special and I was told I was going to learn how to sexually please men. I was nine years old. I didn't know what sexually please men meant, but I just knew that if I was good, and behaved myself I could stay. I stayed for three weeks. It was probably the best three weeks of my life up to that point.
There were other children there as young as five or six years old. Children younger than myself. There were young women there ... teenagers ... all different ages, and some boys too. The first couple of days we kind of saw each other, and after that you were pretty much alone with one person. You were paired up with an adult and you stayed with them for three weeks in a cabin, like a resort cabin. I was told later by one of the experts that this place was a CIA training ground and also a place where people could just get away, take vacations. It was free if you were in the CIA. It was also very isolated. It was on like an island ... it was hard to get to, it was very private. Anyhow my day consisted of being with this man called "Uncle Otto", that's what he told me to call him and he was a doctor and he was from Kansas. I got to choose what name I wanted to use and I chose Ava after Ava Gardner because I loved movie stars. We spent the day going to the pool or just staying in the room playing games that he taught me. Most of the time I didn't have any clothes on. Most of the time he didn't have any clothes on. But after a while you just learned to ignore that kind of stuff. You weren't embarassed anymore. And it was only one person. It wasn't like you had to go in front of all these strangers with no clothes on, so that was an improvement. You weren't really doing any horrible things where people were screaming, where there was blood. He was of course molesting me, but he didn't actually rape me so it wasn't physically painful in that sense. Everything was kind of an improvement over what I was used to and this was a vacation.
In the evening, after about a week there, Uncle Otto had taught me different things to sexually please men just like they said I was going to. And I thought they were yucky and I didn't like doing it but I thought well this is what I have to do to not be hurt and to be treated nice and get good food and not starve because my mother would starve me sometimes when we went to camp. Sometimes all you had to eat was an orange or something. I mean that's something they would give you. This was definitely an improvement. I thought if I have to do this yucky stuff well then I am going to do it. Of course different shadows or alters would come out and help me, so that I didn't always have to do it. After the first week, other people started coming in, other men, and what they would do is put me in a room with them. I would have to do whatever they wanted, but it wasn't violent, you know. They were mostly kind of molesting me, kind of thing. Or I would do something to them, and I knew it was being filmed. They showed me about the camera behind the mirror and I had to get them to talk about themselves. Afterwards I would go in this room and there would be the "Gottlieb Man", the "Man with a Pebble in His Shoe", a man named "Morgan Hall" who was really Captain White. Morse Allen, the "Morse Man, and Uncle Otto. Sometimes there would be other people there. They would ask me to describe the person, to repeat everything he had said to me, just pretty much to remember everything I could about the incident, and then they would show the film they had taken and see how well I had remembered and tell me how well I did, or if I forgot something important it was pointed out to me, or if there was something I could have done better, like getting him to talk about his family more.
Wayne Morris:
Did you get the sense that these other men knew about the camera behind the mirror?
Claudia Mullen:
Oh yeah, they all knew, because first I would talk about it and then they would show the film that had been taken that day.
Wayne Morris:
But the actual men who were in the room ...
Claudia Mullen:
Oh no, no. I don't think they did. I don't know who they were ... soldiers maybe ... I don't know. People they flew in to be subjects, I don't know who they were. No. I doubt seriously that they knew about the camera. They didn't act like they knew.
Wayne Morris:
So you believe that the experimentation that was done with you was for purposes of using you in sexual blackmail or entrapment?
Claudia Mullen:
Definitely. But as I got older, I was told they were going to be using me "out in the field". But I had to be a certain age because they couldn't send a nine year old or even a ten year old to a hotel room with a man, it would be a little bit too much I guess, so they had to wait until I got to be more like twelve or thirteen when they really started using me. But they told me that's what they were doing. They were going to get these people on the film ... Captain White told me. He was in charge of taking the film. I called him the "Martini Man" because he drank martinis all the time and he carried a gun, and he said he was a policeman at one time. He told me what they were doing -- taking pictures of the men with me because they were doing something they weren't supposed to be doing. And of course I knew that. I knew it was wrong. They had wives at home, and children, and they wouldn't want their wives to know what they did, they wouldn't want the people they worked with to know that they were talking about their job. That's why I had to get them talking about what they did, what kind of stuff they did, describe their families, ask them about money. I knew that whatever these people were telling me and doing to me was going to be used against them. And when I got a little older, there started to be a lot of politicians, people in the CIA -- I don't know how they didn't know they were being filmed because they knew about those projects, but for some reason -- I guess because it was a different hotel or a different place, they thought they were getting away with it, that nobody was watching them. So just about everybody got filmed ...
Wayne Morris:
You are saying that other CIA personnel were filmed with you as well with you?
Claudia Mullen:
Yeah. Just about everybody was filmed except Martin Orne, he was the only one who wasn't about to be caught. He made sure that he never got on film, at least that I know of. They may have gotten him with someone else, they didn't get him with me.
Wayne Morris:
Did you get a sense of what they were using these films specifically for against these people?
Claudia Mullen:
They said it was for money and to keep the projects going, but the most important thing was that the President wanted these projects going and that they had to get the money because the CIA couldn't afford to pay for it, so other people had to pay for it and didn't I want to keep helping the President? Of course I said yeah. Well, he needs money from these people. Sometimes the people decide that they don't want to give money anymore, so if we have the films, and they don't want anyone to know what they did on the films, then they are going to give money. So they pretty much explained to me what they were using me for. Then there were doctors that, people that had foundations behind their names, so-and-so Foundation and like -- there was a doctor -- there were a lot of people named "Charles" for some reason. There was a Dr. Charles Geshecker or something like that and he had a foundation or something -- and he was one of the people I got filmed with.
Wayne Morris:
Geschickter Foundation, was that the name?
Claudia Mullen:
Yeah. His name was Charles and he was a doctor. He was one of those people who had a lot of money, I was told ...
Wayne Morris:
So these people who were filmed were in some ways involved in funding these projects, or were coerced into funding?
Claudia Mullen:
Some of them were. I think they were afraid they would talk about the projects, and so they had to use something to keep them quiet. For instance, there was a guy named Church -- all I knew was, he would try, he was very important to them because he was going to convince other people to let the projects keep going and so they had to get something on this guy, Church. This was later, when I was in high school. Supposedly he ended up talking other people into letting the projects keep going. He was supposed to be investigating - to see if there was anything wrong being done by the CIA - and so he of course decided nothing wrong was being done because they had a film on him.
Wayne Morris:
So you got the sense that this man, Church, was a politician in some way?
Claudia Mullen:
I know some of them were politicians because they had Senator in front of their name. I don't know if he was a Senator, I just know he was Frank Church. He was on some committee that was supposed to be checking on the CIA to see if what they were doing was wrong, or illegal, or something. They said he was going to decide in favour of the CIA because they were going to tell him the film would show up somewhere if he didn't. Apparently it worked, because they kept going. There was a Senator from Louisiana that I was with a couple of times. He was kind of old, but apparently he was on one of the committees that was checking up on the CIA. They were always being checked on ... that's what they told me. People were always trying to find something bad about them to stop the projects and shut them down and they had to keep going, and if it meant hurting a few people, then that's what they had to do.
Wayne Morris:
Do you have a sense of how often you were used for this kind of entrapment or coercion?
Claudia Mullen:
Well ... there were certain years that I was used a lot. When I was 13 and 14 - I would say at least a couple of times a month. There were times when they would have me for two or three weeks, you know. I would go every day ... so ... or they would take me out of town someplace. I would go in these little planes and go to different military bases, sometimes there were houses. I went to Texas a lot. I went to Maryland a lot. There was a lot during the years 1963-64 and then, like before I graduated from high school, 1966-67, they used me a lot. And then in 1972 when I was getting ready to graduate from college they got a hold of me for several times for a couple of weeks. It was pretty much ... I could expect it every August because a lot of people would come to New Orleans in August and May for some convention or something. There would always be a lot of doctors in town and ... I knew I was going to have to go some place. But I didn't know in between, because obviously I would forget, because they would always make sure that I forgot before they sent me home. They had to do that, because I couldn't go home remembering that I had just been with Senator Long or somebody like that ... you know, they had to make sure I had amnesia so they gave me amnesia barriers in between.
Wayne Morris:
And how would they do that?
Claudia Mullen:
Ah. Shock treatments.
Wayne Morris:
Electricity ...
Claudia Mullen:
Electricity. Yeah. That causes amnesia for recent events. So I would have to go back to Tulane and sit in this chair, it was like a dentist's chair and they had figured out just how much electricity it took to cause my amnesia, or to make it last. There was a man from Canada who spoke with a funny accent and always called me "Lassie" and I always thought, "why is he calling me a dog?" I always thought he was calling me "Lassie" the collie from tv. He was the one who came in and figured out how much electricity it would take, and he was kind of an expert on it.
Wayne Morris:
Do you remember this person's name?
Claudia Mullen:
I called him the "Camera Man" because his last name sounded like Camera Man. He was good friends with the "Dull Men", the Dulles Men. There were two of them and he was good friend of one of them, and he was a doctor and he had saved another man's son. There was a story that he was a story like he was a hero to this "Dull Man" because he had saved his son from something ... he worked for an Institute that was named after one of the "Dull Men". There was one that I never met but heard about. I knew the one Dull Man, called John but I didn't know his brother, I just heard about him. I guess it was Dulles.
Wayne Morris:
That would have been John Foster Dulles ...
Claudia Mullen:
There were a lot of people I didn't ... I never really heard their real names ... but after a while the people who researched all this would say "well obviously you are talking about John Dulles ..." and I would say, "welll who's that?" because I have never been really big on names. I have always stayed away from anything that had anything to do with politics, watching the news. I have always had an aversion to that. Never knew why until now. Now I know why. So I made a point of not knowing anything about politics or politicians. These names meant nothing to me until people started telling me who they were.
Wayne Morris:
Did you remember the actual name of the person you are describing as the "Camera Man"?
Claudia Mullen:
I was told after I described what he looked like and that his last name sounded like camera man and that he talked with an accent that he was Dr. Ewen Cameron from Canada.
Wayne Morris:
And what was Dr. Cameron specifically involved in?
Claudia Mullen:
Electricity.
Wayne Morris:
Just the electricity?
Claudia Mullen:
With me, yeah. They brought him to New Orleans, to Tulane to give me shock treatments to figure out exactly how much they needed and how many times they needed to give it to me to make me forget until the next time. He gave me different amounts of shock at different times. I think I was there for several days, maybe three or four days the first time I met him. I guess I wasn't even a teenager yet, I was just ten or eleven years old. He also did something else. He would make messages on tape and at night when you slept you had to listen to these messages and I guess they used them for his voice or something because he had a really interesting voice, it made you want to listen. He would repeat things over and over again.
Wayne Morris:
It would be his voice on the tapes that were used?
CLAUDIA MULLEN.
Yeah. They would have other people on tape too, but I remember during this time when they were doing the electricity, they would give me what they called the "sleep talk tape" to make you very sleepy. Put you in a dark room, put these earphones on you, then you would have something attached to your toes and to maybe one finger ... like clothespins they felt like ... so you would go to sleep listening to this tape that was going on and his messages ... and if you fell asleep something would wake you up ... these things that were attached to your toes and your hands ... and I guess it was these little jolts of electricity to wake you up. It would keep you from sleeping at all. You couldn't sleep the whole night. You had to listen constantly.
Wayne Morris:
How long would this go on for?
Claudia Mullen:
Three or four days, three or four nights.
Wayne Morris:
Continuous? You were not allowed to sleep during those three or four days?
Claudia Mullen:
Nope.
Wayne Morris:
Do you have memories of what the messages were that were being used?
Claudia Mullen:
They would always start with, "Crystal, your mother abandoned you. She didn't want you." That I was bad, that I was doing these perverted things, that type of thing.
Claudia Mullen:
...the doctors were the only ones who could save me. The doctors were my friends. I had to listen to the doctors and only them. They wouldn't name any names specifically, just to say "the doctors, the good doctors". All my life I always -- if anything was wrong, I always went to a doctor because this was ingrained me, that doctors were the answer to everything. And believe me, my whole life, when I wasn't going through this stuff, I was constantly having something wrong with me. I was in and out of the hospital. I had all sorts of illnesses which they could never diagnosis specifically what was wrong with me; a history of headaches, migraine headaches my whole life, and the headaches were from the shock. They hit you hard, those headaches. You wake up from getting shock treatments and your head just feels like it is going to explode. So that would get you on painkillers and get you addicted to painkillers so you would have to keep going back to get more painkillers for headaches. I had surgery I found out later didn't even need to be done, that they were looking for things that were wrong with me. I would go to other doctors, and they wouldn't know anything about this, they would just -- I had episodes where I was vomiting constantly, couldn't keep any food down, was losing weight, and I had exploratory surgery and they never did find anything wrong with me.
Wayne Morris:
Where was the surgery done on you?
Claudia Mullen:
In my stomach, abdominal surgery. They took my gall bladder and appendix out, but there was nothing wrong with them, and I kept vomiting. What it was was body pain, body memories coming back. Before the actual memories came back, the actual flashbacks come, you get the body pain first. That's the first sign that you are getting a memory. It usually starts with a headache, and then stomach-ache, cramps ... the actual pain of the memory without the actual memory, you would just get the pain part. Pain comes first, always. Pain is a barrier to remembering. Because you would be in so much pain, you would want to get rid of the pain right away, so I would call up Dr. Charles Brown who was the, friend, the one I told you about, who was actually my monitor and friends with Darlen Fenner, Robert Heath, Martin Orne. I would go to him and say I am having these horrible headaches, cramps, they won't go away. Of course that would be a sign to him that she's remembering, she's going to start remembering pretty soon. So then he would take me to Dr. Heath and he would say well he's going to fix me up and he would give me more shock treatments and I would go home and forget.
Wayne Morris:
He would give you electroshock ...
Claudia Mullen:
Yeah. And then painkillers for the headache that I would get afterwards. But the body pain would go away because I would start remembering. So I would start having nightmares about snakes or weird things and I would go to Dr. Brown and say I am having these nightmares and he would think oh she's going to start remembering things so we'd better do something. It was usually shock that they used, but sometimes they would use trauma, just traumatize you so much you would just forget.
Wayne Morris:
And how would they traumatize you?
Claudia Mullen:
It depended on what was going on at the time. Sometimes they would send me to ... they knew people in the city who were involved in the white supremacy groups ... sometimes they would send me out to Klan meetings and I would have to go to one of them at night and watch things being done to other people and then ... have things done to me ... be raped or eaten or whatever ... you had enough trauma to make you forget whatever you were starting to remember. This would make it go away. Then you would forget this as soon as it happened too. Because nobody wants to remember something like that. One of the mind's defences I guess when something really horrible happens is to forget it right away, usually. If it's bad enough. And then of course I had the personalities ... they would come out for the trauma and then they would go back ... and so Claudia would have no memory of what just happened. My shadows would, but I wouldn't. Unless they would give me the memory, it was as if it never happened to me. I would be sore, hurt, bruised, whatever, but I wouldn't know why so I would go to Dr. Brown or Dr. Heath and they would explain what happened to me. And usually they would make up some story about how I tried to hurt myself, that I tried to kill myself again. I thought I was suicidal my whole life because they told me I was.
Wayne Morris:
Did you feel the doctors were deliberately creating dissociation with you?
Claudia Mullen:
They knew that I could dissociate from the beginning, so they just caused me to dissociate even more, because the more you split, the easier it was to hide what they were doing. In other words, you can only split ... they can't make you split, can't make you dissociate, but they can create the circumstances that they know if you are able to dissociate you will, you will do it. Like the trauma I just described, by sending me out to a Masonic Lodge for a party ... they would send me out and they knew something horrible was going to happen to me. They knew that I would split. That someone would be created to take whatever happened that night, and probably that's all they would do, and then they would go back, and then, you know, go to sleep, become dormant. These are the shadows that I've talked about, that I have integrated. Once they gave me the memory up to that experience, then they integrate. So, they create circumstances to make you split, and split, and split, and the more you split the less chance you have of ever healing ... the more crazy you are going to sound if you ever do go to work with a psychiatrist, therapist, because there was always that chance ... that I might get away from them and seek help from someone other than the "good doctors" that I knew already. So they had to make you seem as crazy as possible, and of course, the more alters you have, the more bizarre you are going to seem to people. The more bizarre the trauma ... like the camp I would go to across the lake ... that Mr. Fenner had ... they would put on these ceremonies. A lot of times it was fake stuff. They would pretend to cut people open or kill babies. Back then I thought it was real, it was all happening. If you describe something like that about a ceremony where a baby is cut up and killed and eaten, people are going to think you're insance, this didn't happen.
So they would kind of mimic Satanic rituals to make it seem like that had happened, and if I ever told anybody, they would dismiss it right away.
Wayne Morris:
So you feel that these things were done basically to cover the doctors' tracks ...
Claudia Mullen:
Yeah, right. To make it seem, if I ever remembered, I would remember first the incest stuff, the stuff at home, and then it would gradually go from that to the ritual stuff. Rituals meaning either Satanic stuff across the lake ... rituals ... like the white supremacy groups ... like the rituals that they do ... burning the crosses. I mean I actually saw them kill people, black people. This is like in the early 60's. I went to a couple of Masonic parties at a Lodge which was located right near the research building ... the research building for animal research in New Orleans, and it is still there as a matter of fact. I have been back there. They sent me there sometimes, for certain tests, for experiments ... there was a Masonic Lodge right around the corner from it ... and they sent me to a couple of parties there. These people go crazy at these parties. These men, they just get drunk and ... they pass you around ... it's horrible what they do. This of course makes it seem like ... if I remember ... well, I remember being at this party and these men were hurting me but I don't remember doctors being involved, I don't remember Tulane University being involved, or anybody from Maryland. I would remember this Masonic Lodge and so that's how they cover their tracks.
Wayne Morris:
Was it sexual abuse that was going on or other kinds of abuse at these parties?
Claudia Mullen:
They would make you perform sexually. They would make you watch other people perform. They would have everything you could imagine, even bringing in animals ... and you had to watch. It's just as bad as having it done to yourself ... sometimes watching is just as bad ...
Wayne Morris:
Watching it being done to other children or ...
Claudia Mullen:
Yeah, especially if it's people younger than yourself. You're a child and you have to stand there and watch a little kid, half your age, being tortured or raped, or whatever. I mean, that's as bad as having it done to yourself. You would almost rather it be done to you because ... you know what it's like, and you don't want to watch it. Then they would give you the choice ... well, then, you could take their place. And then you would have to make the decision whether it's going to be you or her, and then if you decide not to do it, then you have to live with the guilt that it happened to someone else because you decided not to do it. So they had you either way you looked at it ... you're screwed either way usually. There was no way out of any of these situations.
Wayne Morris:
When you remember this Lodge, did you make attempts to verify where it was?
Claudia Mullen:
Yeah, we went there. We went to the Lodge, talked to people, but it's not a Lodge anymore, it's a public health building now. We talked to people who said, yeah, it was a Masonic Lodge at one time. Valerie and I went there. We went to Camp Nichols which I said was a police training ground now, but they said it was an arsenal at one time, and we went into a room where I stayed when I was there. They did some kind of bizarre ... I guess I was about eight ... there were two other children I was put with ... a boy and a little girl about five years old. And they would do things like ... I guess just to traumatize you ... they would do things ... sexual to you, or physically hurt you, beat you or whatever, and then they would say, well, you have to choose somebody, which person is going to live or die? The boy or the girl? They would give you choices like that. Impossible situations. And then, they would go through the motions where they would take one of the kids outside, kill them, they didn't, I am sure they didn't, I'm sure it was like a play they put on ... but it was just to put you through these mind games ... just to mess up your ... I don't know what they were doing ... just trauma, I know that. By the time they were finished, you didn't know if you were coming or going. It just seemed so bizarre, and if I had ever remembered it before now, before I had a good therapist to help me, and who validated the fact that these things do happen ... anybody else would think you were just crazy, and they would lock you up and throw away the key.
Wayne Morris:
I think that was their intent. It seems that incorporating ...
Claudia Mullen:
And there were a lot of messages they gave you over the years, that if you did start remembering this, the guilt would be so bad, that you would have to kill yourself, and they were hoping that by now, I would have killed myself and I haven't (laughs) ... they are pretty pissed off about it, the people that are left ...
Wayne Morris:
Did you feel that they were using this trauma to create dissociation for other purposes than just hiding the fact that they were doing the experiments on you?
Claudia Mullen:
I think they were doing it also just to see what they could do ... they could take a child's mind ... and what could they actually do? How much could they cause her to split? How many times? How much could they do to somebody, and how quickly could they forget it? Just to see what could be done ... just for the hell of it, I guess.
Wayne Morris:
Perhaps that was part of the experimentation itself ...
Claudia Mullen:
Yeah. They had a lot of different projects. It wasn't all sexual stuff -- there were a lot of projects that were just about mind control. They had these names for the projects that were -- you would never know what the project was really about -- Sensitive Research - that was part of the Operational side of the CIA -- that was a department of the CIA - well, it was sexual stuff. Sensitive Research? That could be just about anything, right? And Uncle Richard was head of the Sensitive Research Department, "Dirty Tricks Department" he called it. Uncle Richard turned out to be, after I described him, and had a lot of memories about him, I found out from one of the experts that his name was Richard Helms.
Wayne Morris:
And he was the CIA Director at a certain point ...
Claudia Mullen:
When I knew him, he was the Deputy Director ... they called him "the Deputy". I can remember being impressed because I loved cowboys, cowboy movies and stuff, so when he told me he was a deputy, that's all I heard, and I thought he was a deputy like in the Old West. He didn't really molest me or do anything to me until I got to be about 13 and then he started all of a sudden ... it was "call me Uncle Richard". Before that he would pretty much dismiss me or talk around me or not pay any attention to me. I was always really impressed by that because he seemed to have a lot of power, everybody seemed to listen to what he had to say, he dressed in the most expensive clothes, he always looked really nice, he had everybody waiting on him hand and foot. He was an impressive man and I was always in awe of him. All of a sudden, when I turned 13, he started paying attention to me and that really impressed me. I thought I must be really special ... this guy says call me Uncle Richard now ... it turns out he liked teenage girls, he didn't like children. He would purposely take me to places where he knew they didn't have cameras because he knew all about the cameras, the filming.
Wayne Morris:
I wonder if we could go through the people that you have mentioned in your testimony and if we could talk one by one about exactly what they were involved in ... in the experimentation? Maybe we could start with Sidney Gottlieb ...
Claudia Mullen:
Okay. Sidney Gottlieb is one of the first people that I remember from when I was 8 years old, he was there from the beginning. I knew that he worked for "The Agency". They always referred to "The Agency". They made no secret of the fact that it was the CIA. Sometimes I would overhear or they would tell me which department they were from -- he was in the Science and Technology Department, he said. He worked very closely with Martin Orne, a Dr. Steven Aldridge, and Morse Allen. Apparently he and Morse Allen had been working together since this whole thing started -- since the late 1940's or early 50's -- and they were all good friends with Richard Helms too, which was kind of odd because they were complete opposites to each other -- they seemed like people who could never get along together, yet they were very good friends. Gottlieb had a lot to do with radiation -- with any kind of research. I remember him all the way from when I was little through the time I was in high school, and after that I didn't see him much, I didn't hear about him much. I don't know where he went, what he was doing. He must have been involved with something else.
Wayne Morris:
So, how many years was he involved and what happened to you?
Claudia Mullen:
>From eight years old to sixteen years -- about eight years. He told me he raised goats. They would talk about themselves sometimes. It is amazing. These people would just ... as if they figured I wasn't going to remember anything when I left, wherever I was. So they were just free to talk and sometimes they just used to like to brag about themselves. I remember so much about them because basically they were arrogant, most of them were arrogant people and they liked you to know how important they were, or how many kids they had, how much power they had -- so they would say what their title was or something to impress you I guess. Thinking the whole time that "she is not going to remember" or thinking they are talking to a child who doesn't even understand the words they are using, not knowing that years later I am going to remember the same words and understand their meaning.
Wayne Morris:
You mentioned Dr. Ewen Cameron was specifically involved in the electroshock. You do have a sense of how long of a period he was involved with your experimentation?
Claudia Mullen:
They called a lot of them in as "consultants". Dr. Heath or Dr. Green would say, "let's call Cameron in ... to test her." Next thing I knew, I would be called back to Tulane and here was the "Camera Man", Cameron. He came in around 1960 when I was about 9 or 10. He was there a lot at first, testing how much electricity was too much, they didn't want to fry my brain or anything because they needed me to seem fairly intelligent because I had to associate with people. I had to go back to school, so they had to be very careful when they used stuff on me, they couldn't disfigure me. I guess I was lucky in that sense, that I was in a private girls' school, I was from a wealthy family and they had to send me back home. My family wasn't involved in this per se. My mom knew they were using me, but she didn't know what exactly - so they had to send me back in fairly good condition. So that made me one of the lucky ones. For the ones from homeless families, or poor families - they didn't care what condition they sent them back in, or even if they sent the child back at all. They would use things on them that would disfigure them, but it didn't matter. In my case, I was fortunate.
Another thing was that Dr. Heath wanted to implant something in my brain and Mr. Fenner wouldn't let him. He said how am I going to explain this to her mother? We can't send her home with her head shaved, so I got out of having implants in my brain because of that.
But you asked me about Cameron. I knew him from about 1959 or 1960 and then when I was in high school one day, just out of the blue, someone said, "he fell off a mountain" - somebody named "Cleghorn" was coming to get me to do the electric shock. I was told years later, that yeah, he was mountain-climbing or skiing and fell off a mountain and died, so that was true.
Wayne Morris:
Did you have a sense of who this Cleghorn person was?
Claudia Mullen:
He worked with Cameron very closely. I guess he was from the same place. He liked to use electricity, only he thought Cameron didn't use enough. He believed in using a lot more. He didn't try to get along with you, or act friendly in any way. He was very cold. Whereas Cameron could talk to you or attempt to be friendly. Some of them were like that. They would introduce themselves, ask questions. Others just did what they had to do and got out of there and never said a word.
Wayne Morris:
So how many years did you come in contact with Dr. Cameron, from 1959-60 until when ...
Claudia Mullen:
I think until I was about 16 or 16 1/2, so that would be 1966 or 1967 and I was told he had fallen off a mountain. I know I was in high school, the latter part of high school. Around 1966 or 1967. The thing I was telling you about - the messages he would give me - he would tape record and then they would play at night? They called it something called "psychic driving". That's what the messages were called.
Wayne Morris:
And Martin Orne? What was his involvement?
Claudia Mullen:
Oh boy. He was one of the scariest people. He was with Dr. Brown, my monitor, at the NIH in the 1950's and they were good friends. He said he was an expert in lie detection and that he could always tell when someone was lying, that he had invented the lie detector or something ... He is a very arrogant person and thinks a lot of himself so he could have told me a lot of lies about what he could do and what he couldn't do. There wasn't anything he couldn't do ... supposedly. He could tell whenever you were lying. He hated everyone. He didn't get along with anyone. He called me "the little bitch" - that was his nickname for me. He wouldn't even call me by name. He mainly did hypnosis type stuff, he was always there for the shock treatments, if nothing else, just to watch ... When they asked me questions, he would be the one to tell them whether I was lying or not. He would have me hooked up to a couple of machines, he would have electrodes on my head and he said he could read the machines and tell whether I was lying or not. I guess it was like a lie detector, I don't know. He's still alive.
Claudia Mullen:
He's still alive in Philadelphia. I called him, he was one of the people i called, cause I remembered him, before i started getting all these memories back. I remembered Robert Heath, of course Dr. Brown, and i remembered this Martin Orne.
Wayne Morris:
So, at what point did you phone him back?
Claudia Mullen:
I phoned him ... after ... the rape happened in October of 1992. That next spring. I started getting weird nightmares and flashbacks. I remembered Martin Orne.
Wayne Morris:
You remembered him as one of your so-called "good" doctors.
Claudia Mullen:
Right. I had his home number. So I called him and he said had I called Dr. Heath. I said "yeah, but he wants me to come back for more electric shock treatments." So Orne said, "that's what you need to do then." I said, why did you do these things to me? I remember you. You were so mean." He said he never did anything to hurt me, that he was just there as a consultant. He swore up and down he never did anything to hurt me. Then I heard ... after we got back from Washington testifying ... I heard that he had a stroke. He is still paralyzed from the stroke I think.
Wayne Morris:
And what about Dr. Robert Heath? What aspects was he specifically involved with?
Claudia Mullen:
He is a neuropsychiatrist and he is the head of the department at Tulane University. It was his department that was given the money, the grant money. He was also given a whole wing of the medical school (just to use for experiments) by Mr. Fenner who was the Chairman of the Board of Tulane Medical School. There were just a lot of children, I remember. We weren't allowed to talk to each other. We weren't even supposed to see each other, but you could hear them sometimes. We would stay on this wing where there weren't any nurses, right? It was just like orderlies and the doctors, but it wasn't a regular hospital like with nurses who came into see you. You had monitors in your room and they watched you. I am pretty sure they had a camera in your room. And Dr. Heath was the head of the department there, and he also was known for doing a lot of work on brains ... experimenting on people's brains and he was the one who wanted to put an implant in my brain so that he could "telegraph", he said, "messages to me" when I was doing the entrapment thing with men that he could stimulate different parts of your brain or something ... he could do it by you know ... remote ... he didn't call it remote control ... he said he could access my brain from a distance, but he had to implant a box in your head.
Wayne Morris:
So would you say he was the main doctor in charge of what happened to you?
Claudia Mullen:
Yes. He was considered "my" doctor, like on record. I had to have a record, for charts, at Tulane under the name Chrystal Stone, and he was Chrystal Stone's doctor. Of course he has now removed my records. When I called him the first time, and said "what did you do to me? I am having these memories, and I thought you were my doctor back then." My mother had brought me to Tulane because Mr. Fenner had told her he thought they could help me at Tulane because I was having behavioural problems at home, and I was real little. This was before Deep Creek Lodge and all that before I was eight years old. She said I was acting out and I was crying lots ... wetting the bed and stuff like that and so Mr. Fenner suggested that she should bring me to Tulane to see this Dr. Heath. That's how I met him. She signed papers giving him permission to do anything he found necessary to help me, so he had free reign to do anything he wanted to me with my mother's permission. He would call and tell her, well Claudia needs to come in for a treatment ... bring her in ... or ... have somebody bring her in. She would just drop me off in front of the building ... you know six or seven years old and she would just drop me off at this big huge hospital and I would have to go in and take this elevator up and a woman would come and get me and take me to the room. I would be there for days, sometimes weeks and the next thing I knew I would wake up one morning and Dr. Heath would be standing there and he would say, "well, how are you feeling dear?" "Are you ready to go home?" He would tell me that I was much better and that I wouldn't misbehave anymore and I wouldn't have any clue as to what happened to me while I was there. I would just wake up with no memory of what happened and he would tell me I had been good, and obedient, and it was time to go home. So he would send me home, and he would call my mother if I had like bruises or anything that had to be explained and he would give her some explanation as to how they had happened. Or if I was bleeding he would tell her that they had to do an examination or a test and that had made me bleed. And she didn't question anything, I don't think she really cared. She didn't want to know.
Wayne Morris:
And what about Morse Allen? You mentioned him. From what you remember, what was his involvement?
Claudia Mullen:
He was with the department that was called Science and Technology. I think at one time Martin Orne was the head of that department. He was with ORD, Office of Research and Development, and Morse Allen was the head of that. It was research on a whole bunch of different things, but I know he had a lot to do with radiation because I heard him talk about it, but he also worked with the project which involved me. I remember him pretty much from the beginning ... from 1958 through some time in high school and then I don't remember him any more.
Wayne Morris:
And what about L. Wilson Greene whom you also mentioned ...
Claudia Mullen:
Next to Heath, I guess he had the most authority or whatever you wanted to call it. He was a German doctor. Liam was his first name, but he hated being called anything but Dr. Greene. He was head of Edgewood Arsenal, that's where his office was ... in Fort Dietrich, Maryland but he came to Tulane quite a bit and worked with Dr. Heath on the projects. He told me, when I was about fourteen or fifteen, he told one of my shadows the story ... how he got involved. He said he was Jewish, and he was iin a concentration camp when the war ended and the Nazis had killed his sister and put him in a concentration camp. He had met the Angel of Death there, and that was his hero and he used to love to watch him do experiments on twins and everything ... I didn't know who the Angel of Death was ... I didn't even know who that was. It turned out it was Mengele. Dr. Greene said that he was put in the camp when he was fifteen ... I don't know how long he stayed ... but when the war ended, the United States paid to bring him back to the U.S. and put him through medical school and now they paid him to do these experiments. So he said, your government paid for me to do things to you and he thought our government was made up of fools, everybody was a fool, that they were stupid but he said he got paid by them, so they were the ones who got him out of the camp ...
Wayne Morris:
What you are saying is it seems that L. Wilson Greene, although a victim at the concentration camps under Mengele, had somehow associated himself ... and helped with the experiments ...
Claudia Mullen:
He had gotten in good with Mengele by showing an interest in the experiments they were doing and so it became like ... he wasn't really a prisoner anymore, it was more like he worked as his assistant, almost, even though he was Jewish ... he showed a lot of morbid interest in what they were doing. This was his story ... I don't know if it's true. He told me this ... I don't think he told anyone else ... I think he told everybody different things ... this is the story he told me. He didn't really talk about himself. He didn't seem to have any private life. He didn't seem to have a wife, or children. He seemed to always be travelling from one place to another. I never even knew where he stayed when he was in New Orleans until years later I found out that he stayed at Camp Nichols. I thought he lived at the hospital because he was always there.
Wayne Morris:
Were any of the doctors involved in sexually abusing you while this experimentation was going on?
Claudia Mullen:
Yes. A lot of them were. Most of them took advantage of the fact that ... as long as they were there, they had access to ... they would ... you know ... do whatever they wanted. One of the few who didn't was Gottlieb ... I was told it was kind of a joke that was going around that he only liked little boys ... I guess that's why he didn't want anything to do with me. Martin Orne did though. Dr. Greene did a couple of times. Dr. Brown, and of course a lot of the Agency men ... they did. Oh, Hamilton. He was a horrible man. James Hamilton. He was from California I think. Yes, Stanford or .. he was from California and he was involved in projects that had to do with deviant sexual behaviour and ... every time he got a chance, from the time I was eight years old, until in my twenties, he took advantage of it. They even had a tape of him ... he didn't seem to really care though.
Wayne Morris:
What kind of other people were you forced to have sex with in terms of blackmailing, and what were their backgrounds?
Claudia Mullen:
Military people. They had these people called the Inspector Generals that came around. They would go around the country looking at different places where they were doing these projects and they would determine if the money was being well spent or not. So one of the ways they would convince them that the money was being used well was by offering them whoever they wanted. They usually wore uniforms so I knew they were in the military. They were Inspectors. They would say the Inspector is coming, you had better be nice to him, and you had better do whatever he wants. And they always took advantage of you. One was the man with the wings on his jacket. He was a Colonel and I guess he was in the Air Force ... I guess that's why he had wings on his jacket. He was one of the Inspectors that came. Then there was an Admiral that came, he was an Inspector. That was mainly the military men ... they were either present at ... They used to have these things like ... I went to Texas a few times. I went to this placed called "TRIMS" and I remember it had the letters on the outside of the gate and I remember "R" was for Research, "T" was for Texas. I was brought there and they would put on these, not "shows" but I guess they had to show a lot of people, like military, agency people ... the doctors would have to show what progress they were making on the projects. And so they would present different subjects that were being used and show what they were able to accomplish. And you had to get in front of this audience of people, it's like an auditorium and they did things like ... they could create ... one of the things they could do was like ... when you split sometimes ... you can actually cause anaesthesia in your body ... like splitting off that part and you don't feel the pain at the time it is happening, but you feel it later ... and they would do things that would cause a lot of pain but obviously weren't causing pain at the time and everybody would ooh and aahhh over that because it was something they had never seen before. And this was how they would prove they were using the money they were being given. They had to show people that they weren't just spending it on hotel rooms and food and stuff. They had to show they were actually doing research. I remember that distinctly, in Texas, having that being done, where they would inflict pain and you wouldn't feel it. They would put you in a trance under hypnosis, tell you that you couldn't feel this part of your body, put a lit candle on it ... and you wouldn't feel anything. Later on you would feel the burn, but it was a demonstration. I think it was an Air Force base that I was at ... I guess people would fly in.
I wasn't the only one ... like a whole line of people waiting just to go in, and we all had hospital gowns on, and Dr. Heath and Dr. Greene brought me in and they would talk to the audience and say what they were going to do and then ...
Wayne Morris:
I wonder if we can talk about the specific programs that you believed you were involved in that you might have overheard. I know you mentioned MKULTRA. In terms of your experience, what was MKULTRA about, and maybe we could go through some of the other projects ...
Claudia Mullen:
This is how it was kind of explained to me ... not really explained ... but as I overheard them talking about it. Back during WWII when they started all this research stuff, they had a project called BLUEBIRD and they changed the name because there was another branch of the government doing something called BLUEBIRD. So they changed it to ARTICHOKE. The Big A, they called it. They were trying to create amnesia. I think they were going to use it on soldiers but they had to test it on people first. There was a professor who was doing it ... I never met him anything, I just heard them talking about him.
This eventually became MKULTRA. MKULTRA was like the big generic name for all the other projects ... they went under MKULTRA ... MK was supposed to stand for Mind Control. I know the spelling wasn't right but ...
Wayne Morris:
It would be the correct spelling using the German word "kontrol" ...
Claudia Mullen:
Maybe Dr. Gottlieb thought of that then. ULTRA was for the ultimate in the mind control. One time I went to Mexico City briefly to get films of a person there ... MKULTRA 128 they called it ... then it would be sub-project 18, and I was subject #3. After an experiment was over, Dr. Heath and whoever was in charge of it - most of the time it was Dr. Heath because he was in charge of names - he would have to sit down and dictate (like doctors do, you know they dictate their notes about a case into a machine after surgery or something) -- well they would have to do the same thing, because it had to go on the records into the CIA files. Every now and then I would sit there and listen. I was supposed to be sleeping, resting, something ... I would be listening and that part of me that had a photographic memory would be memorizing what they were saying. He would go into this long, detailed explanation of the project they had just done, and every now and then he would say the word "delete" -- ie MKULTRA July 1963 in Mexico City delete. That would mean delete the last thing he just said, because sometimes they didn't want to give too much detail.
There were other projects I wasn't involved in but I overheard them talking about, like MKNAOMI and that had to do with drugs that they used to do different things to soldiers, like they were going to use it on the enemy. They called it the K problem, which was paralysis. I would hear ... Operation Secret was under MKULTRA and that was a project and it had to do with the brain. MKSEARCH - I guess it was germ warfare, biological, and something to do with radiation. MKULTRA - Subproject #3 was to do with safe houses which they used, like the Roosevelt Hotel here in New Orleans -- a place they kept all year round, with cameras, and it was some place safe they could use and not worry about anybody finding out about it. Something to do with hypnosis, radiation or electricity came under ORD (Office of Research and Development) and Martin was Technical Science Director for a long time. Operation CHATTER had to do with giving you drugs to make you talk -- trying different drugs on enemy soldiers to try and make them talk.
Wayne Morris:
What would you like to see done to help yourself and other survivors who have gone through this?
Claudia Mullen:
I would like to see us validated by opening up whatever CIA files remain classified, and I feel like a lot of the information I have given will be there. I know that my name is listed in the files because I actually saw it on a file in 1964. I had access to a file that was left out in a room and my name, Chrystal Stone, was on there and there was a memo that was going to be sent to the Director. I have the feeling that even though they destroyed a lot of the files, there will be some left. Possibly with my name on it. And for the facts that people have given, it will be validation. Even though these people can't be prosecuted, I want the President to acknowledge that it happened and that something should be done about it.
Wayne Morris:
How do you see this coming about? One element is declassifying the files that are still left ...
Claudia Mullen:
I think they should have another Commission -- this time on mind control, specifically on mind control. Have an investigation -- ie. Tuskagee, those experiments. There is supposed to be another Commission that President Clinton is opening on other CIA stuff so I think I would like to see him have a Committee specifically for mind control, and looking in the CIA files specifically for mind control -- especially done on children. Because that's the most horrible part of all this is that they did this to children -- it wasn't just unwitting citizens that got hurt -- they did this to little kids, did these horrible things to children and they didn't think anything of it.They didn't feel any guilt or remorse about it -- I know that.
Wayne Morris:
From what you remember, what is your sense of how many other children were involved?
Claudia Mullen:
I am sure there were thousands and thousands ... I mean just from the amount of children I saw that summer at Deep Creek Lodge in Maryland -- there must have been 75 kids there -- and you can imagine that was just one time that I went -- how many other kids were involved -- and every time they went there, there were another 75 kids and multiply that by times all over the country. You must be talking about thousands. All the kids are grown up now and I think it should be acknowledged that it did happen to us and to make sure that it is not happening any more. How do we know that they are still not doing things like this?
Wayne Morris:
Have you been in contact with other survivors?
Claudia Mullen:
Yes. In contact all the time through the Internet, I meet them at conferences.
Wayne Morris:
And when did you start getting in contact with other survivors?
Claudia Mullen:
Right after Washington. Before that I was just mainly involved in my own therapy and that was the first contact I had with any other survivors, in Washington, D.C. Since then it's been constant contact with people because there would be similarities. They would have similar things that had happened to them that I had talked about. Or just the fact that there were a lot of us who were adopted who were used in these experiments. I am sure there is a reason for that. I am sure there is an inordinate amount of children who were adopted that were used.
Wayne Morris:
What would you want or expect as an outcome if these hearings were held on mind control experiments?
Claudia Mullen:
I want the President to acknowledge -- to come out and tell the world that this did happen, that the government was behind it, that they paid for it, that our tax dollars paid for it. I don't expect much in compensation as far as money, I mean that's not why I am doing it. I don't know if there will be any money but that's not the point. The point is that people need to know that what our government is capable of doing, what they did, and they should own up to it. Most of the people are dead, what's the point of going into it -- but we need to acknowledge that this kind of thing can happen, has happened, document it so that it never happens again so that people aren't living in a Dreamworld where the government doesn't do things like this, not in this country. But they do and they did ... and people need to know that.
Wayne Morris:
What can people who are listening, that may want to help further progress on getting hearings started ...
Claudia Mullen:
Write to the White House, to the President and Mrs. Clinton -- if they have a computer you can e-mail them directly. If everybody were to write and demand there be Hearings on Mind Control Experiments done on children, I think they would have to listen. If victims come forward and say that "I want this looked into" then the files have to be opened, they have to allow people to see what is in the files. There is no reason to keep them classified any more. They need to contact their senators and congressmen, and keep after the President until something is done.
Wayne Morris:
Claudia I would like to thank you very much for joining and being part of this radio series. I know it's ... I consider it extremely brave of you to come forward with your experiences that you have remembered of these horrific experiments that are inexcusable, and I think people do have to make the government accountable for what they have done.
Claudia Mullen:
Thank you Wayne. I definitely agree, and I would be glad to talk to anyone that wants to contact me through the internet. E-mail address cmullen267@aol.com.
Wayne Morris:
Thank you Claudia.
Claudia Mullen:
Thank you Wayne.
We have been listening to an interview with Claudia Mullen a survivor of US government mind control and the Advocacy Committee for Human Experimentation Survivors - Mind Control (ACHES-MC) can be found at www.aches-mc.org.
We've been listening to an interview with Claudia Mullen, a survivor of mind control experiments done by the U.S. government. She had referred in her presentation in particular to the third person "she". Claudia was actually describing herself either at an earlier age or as a different alter of her multiple personalities. I would like to also announce that this radio series is being re-broadcast on Monday nights at 10pm and this Monday is the 2nd broadcast in the radio series. On the Sunday morning show we are at broadcast 13 this week. Also for people with web access, you can get transcripts of this radio series at www.mk.net/~mcf/ckln-hm.htm.
You have been listening to International Connections here on CKLN FM.
________
You have been listening to Claudia Mullen, a survivor of government mind control. She has given testimony at the U.S. Presidential Hearings on Human Radiation Experiments in March, 1995. Her accounts include being experimented on, starting when she was eight years old at Tulane University in New Orleans, and subsequently being used as a mind control slave to sexually entrap prominent politicians and officials to blackmail them such as Senator Frank Church who headed the Church Committee Hearings into CIA wrongdoings as we have heard in today's interview. We have also heard her accounts of how Dr. Ewen Cameron was responsible for electro-shocking her so she would forget the weekends of experimentation and the sexual blackmail situations. Stay tuned next week for Part 3 of this interview. Also tune in to Monday nights at 10 pm for rebroadcasts of previous shows on mind control on the International Connection 88.1.
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