MENTAL HEALTH Terrorists

Over the last decade an explosion of gratuitous violence has terrorized the world scene. Examination of these destructive phenomena reveals the influence of psychiatric treatment behind virtually all acts of terrorism.

As Gordon Thomas, veteran foreign affairs correspondent and author of Journey into Madness, wrote in 1989: “While political terrorism has been capturing widespread attention for some time, almost nothing has been made public of how doctors today use their knowledge and skills in its support. … Nothing I had researched before could have prepared me for the dark reality of doctors who set out to deliberately destroy minds and bodies they were trained to heal.”

A few examples chillingly prove the premise that psychiatric or psychological influences are at the heart of international terrorism:

Ayman al-Zawahiri: The second most wanted man in the world, he is Osama bin Laden’s chief advisor and a psychiatrist and surgeon who was convicted of terrorism in Egypt and sentenced to death in absentia. Al-Zawahiri studied behavior, psychology and pharmacology as part of his medical degree at Cairo University. According to Islamic lawyer, Muntasir al- Zayat, al-Zawahiri is to bin Laden “what the brain is to the body … able to reshape bin Laden’s thinking and mentality and turn him from merely a supporter of the Afghan Jihad to a believer in, and exporter of, the Jihad’s ideology.”
Interpol issued an arrest warrant for al-Zawahiri relating to his role in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.Cofer Black, a former CIA terrorism expert now with the U.S. State Department, said al-Zawahiri “represents more of a threat” than bin Laden.

Abu Hafiza: Moroccan psychiatrist, senior al-Qaeda leader and reputed mastermind of the March 11, 2004, Madrid train bombings, he reportedly led the operatives who furnished logistical support to 9/11 ring- leader Mohammed Atta and the other terrorists involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He was also implicated in the April 11, 2002, suicide bombing that killed 21 people, mainly tourists, on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba. And, he is linked to a series of car bombings and other explosions in Casablanca, Morocco on May 16, 2003, where 43 died, including 12 suicide bombers. More than 100 were injured.

Masamitsu Susaki, President of Aum Supreme Truth, Japan: On March 20, 1995, a lethal nerve gas attack on Tokyo’s subway left 12 dead and more than 5,500 ill. The nerve gas used was Sarin, a chemical developed for the Nazis during WWII. While the attack was ordered by the Aum leader, Shoko Asahara, it was Susaki, Aum’s president and a psychiatrist, who introduced psychotropic, stimulant and hallucinogenic drugs to the group with the stated purpose of erasing the feeling a person had for the opposite sex. Evidence given in the Aum trials in February, 1996 revealed that Susaki had turned Asahara into an LSD addict who then indulged in “abnormal sex.” Another Aum physician, Ikuo Hayashi, testified that he used the barbiturate, sodium thiopental—a drug known to cause psychosis—and electroshock treatment to “remove [the] memory” of Aum adherents. Dozens of members died from sodium thiopental. More than 2,600 people were given LSD during Aum’s initiation rites.

“Carlos the Jackal” (Illich Ramirez Sanchez): Originally from Venezuela, Carlos was one of the most renowned “revolutionary terrorists” in the history of modern insurgency movements. A 1969 graduate of Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University, where he trained in psychological terrorism and “brainwashing,” “The Jackal” reportedly worked for Mohamar Qaddaffi of Libya and Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Responsible for numerous skyjackings and bombings, he was described as “a ruthless terrorist who operates with cold-blooded, surgical precision.”

Aziz al-Abub (a.k.a: Ibrahim al-Nadhir): The psychiatrist behind the torture and interrogation of hostages kidnapped by terrorists in Beirut, Lebanon, al-Abub studied political persuasion, “brainwashing” and other psychological methods at the Patrice Lumumba campus in Moscow in the 1980s. He familiarized himself with the latest Soviet pharmacological techniques for “keeping a person passive over a lengthy period and reducing the will to resist.” He provided “pep pills” for suicide bombers and implanted them with the idea of the glory of sacrifice and dying. But his greater target is the minds of the people, which he attacks using the tension and fear in the aftermath of acts of terrorism. Today, al-Abub reportedly works in the Iranian prison system, where he is in the perfect position to create scores of criminal suicide bombers using drugs and other psychiatric techniques.

Frantz Fanon: The rhetoric of today’s terrorist can be traced to Fanon, who trained in France to become a psychiatrist. He joined the Algerian War for Independence in 1954. Blaming the West for dehumanizing local cultures, he preached that achieving freedom and mental health required acts of violence. It didn’t matter if the violence was successful, only that the cause was celebrated and publicized. Terrorism involves death, he asserted, but also has positive goals and liberating effects. In his book, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon wrote, “Violence is a purifying force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from despair and inaction. It makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.”

The Unabomber: In the United States, Ted Kaczynski delivered 16 package bombs to scientists, academicians and others over 17 years, killing three people and injuring 23. Subsequent to his arrest, it was revealed that between 1959 and 1962, Kaczynski had been the subject of a disturbing mind control experiment aimed at measuring how people reacted under stress. Harvard psychologists conducted the experiment. The chief researcher was identified as psychiatrist Henry Murray, a lieutenant colonel in World War II, who had worked for the CIA’s predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Murray became preoccupied by psychoanalysis in the 1920s and developed a “personality theory,” applying his theories to the selection of OSS agents and also presumably for interrogation. Murray’s mind control experiment at Harvard was under the control of Sidney Gottlieb, a psychiatrist and head of the CIA’s technical services division. According to Kaczynski, what he experienced at the hands of Murray was “vehement, sweeping and personally abusive” and attacked his most cherished ideals and beliefs. Afterward, he started to have ideas about the “evils of society” and an “anti-technology ideology of revolution.”

The Oklahoma City Bomber: The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was, at the time, the worst act of terrorist violence ever committed in the United States. In his book Others Unknown, Stephen Jones, chief defense counsel in U.S. v. McVeigh stated, “The real story of the bombing … stretches weblike, from America’s heartland to the nation’s capital, the Far East, Europe, and the Middle East, and much remains a mystery.”
According to David Hoffman in The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror, Timothy McVeigh had been a sergeant in the army and done courses in Psy-Ops* (psychological operations) at Fort Riley which involved mind-bending techniques that many have been adversely affected by.

Richard Baumhammers: On April 28, 2000, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Baumhammers shot six people, killing five and paralyzing the sixth. The victims included two Indians, two Asians, an African American and a Jewish woman who lived next door to his parents. Desiring the same notoriety as Hitler and the Oklahoma City bomber, Baumhammers had frequented white supremacist web sites and tried to form a Free Market political party opposing non-white, non-European immigration. He then chose his victims accordingly. Prior to the killing spree, he had been under treatment by 12 different psychologists and psychiatrists and had taken up to different psychiatric drugs.

*Psychological Operations (Psy-Ops) is the study of psychology for military purposes with the primary purpose “to induce or reinforce foreign attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator’s objectives.” Psy-Ops can be used to “influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning or behavior of a targeted public.”

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