Free Margaret Truman's Experiment in Murder by Margaret Truman Page B

deciding one day that he was better suited to psychiatry. He obtained that certification at the University of Chicago’s Pritzer School of Medicine and Neuroscience, abandoned his OB-GYN practice, left Chicago, and established a private psychiatric practice in Washington, where he reasoned that its residents probably suffered more mental problems than citizens of other cities.
    It was in D.C. that he met Colin Landow.
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    Landow also was a psychiatrist, although he’d never practiced. He and Borger were introduced at a conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel hosted by the mid-Atlantic chapter of the American Psychiatric Association. It was during the closing night cocktail party that Landow suggested to Borger that he consider taking part in what Landow termed “a groundbreaking, and I might add lucrative, study with huge national security significance.”
    A phone call to Landow a few days later resulted in a series of meetings that revealed to Borger the nature of the study as well as its sponsor, the Central Intelligence Agency, where Landow headed a top secret division whose sole purpose was to stretch the limits of mind-control research.
    â€œThe Russians have been deeply involved in mind-control experimentation since World War One,” Borger was told, “and the fear that they’ve moved ahead of us in this area is well-founded. We’re taking steps to close the gap. We need men like you who are well schooled in medical hypnosis and the use of psychotropic drugs.”
    Borger often used hypnosis in his practice and had steeped himself in the literature. He was aware of the pioneering work of G. H. Estabrooks, who’d headed the psychology department at Colgate University, and had read Estabrooks’s book Hypnotism, in which a chapter was titled “Hypnotism in Warfare: The Super Spy.” In that chapter Estabrooks focused on how a messenger could be programmed to securely carry secret information:
    With hypnotism we can be sure of our private messenger. We hypnotize our man in, say, Washington. In hypnotism we give him the message. That message, may we add, can be both long and intricate. An intelligent individual can memorize a whole book under hypnosis if necessary. Then we start him out for Australia by plane with the instructions that no one can hypnotize him under any circumstances except Colonel Brown in Melbourne. By this device we overcome two difficulties. It is useless to intercept this messenger.
    He has no documents and no amount of “third degreeing” can extract the information, for the information is not in the conscious mind to extract. We could also make him insensitive to pain so that even torture would be useless.
    Also, with this hypnotic messenger we need have no worry about the double cross. In hypnotism we could build up his loyalty to the point that this would be unthinkable. Besides, he has nothing to tell. He is just a civilian with a business appointment in Australia, nothing more. He will give no information, for he has nothing to give.
    Borger had also become intrigued with the phenomenon of multiple personalities and had treated two patients with this controversial affliction. He was particularly interested in Estabrooks’s theory that creating the “super spy” was possible through the deliberate splitting of personalities within one person, which Estabrooks explained in Hypnotism :
    We start with an excellent subject, and he must be just that, one of those rare individuals who accepts and who carries through every suggestion without hesitation. In addition, we need a man or a woman who is highly intelligent and physically tough. Then we start to develop a case of multiple personality through the use of hypnosis. In his normal waking state, which we will call Personality A, or PA, this individual will become a rabid communist. He will join the party, follow the party line and make himself as objectionable