MIND CONTROL SERIES
Ryerson CKLN Radio in Toronto:  Producer Wayne Morris interviews 
Ronald Howard Cohen  -part 2

Week 7 (Tape B Side) in a Series of Broadcasts CKLN FM  88.l in Toronto

continued
Ronald Howard Cohen

If you follow the map, if you start from Indiana, you can see the highways they
took ... Pennsylvania ... a different driver ... again a grey, nondescript,
nothing in it car ... empty, clean car.  Then another bit of weirdness ...
it's interesting, because operationally, it just seems that they were flying
by the seat of their pants. Which compounded panic, right? So I am looking at 
this guy and now I'm starting to get unwoozy ... I'll get into the state of
mind, like I said this screwed up my head for five years.  The thing was
that I start coming around, and I look over at this guy, and he really
scared me. It was like ... I hate using fiery rhetoric but this looked an SS
true-believer.
He pulls off the highway and he pulls into this hardware-gas station-thing
... and there's a phone booth there, he gets out of the phone booth ... and
I'm just thankful that I'm starting to get, you know I'm moving my hands! and
I'm starting to get, What? What? There was a lot of 'What?' I mean, if you
don't believe it, believe me, I didn't believe it. I seriously thought I was
losing my mind. 

You have to understand that at that point I still didn't understand that the US 
government would do things ... they were good guys ... I'm an American ...
they don't do this to Americans ... I mean, even if I'm a protester, a
hippie ... they didn't do this ... blah blah blah.  This guy gets out of the
car, goes to the phone booth, and I see him, and he's talking on the phone
... I'm thinking, you're asking them what to do ... you don't know ... I got
very frightened ...
I just get the feeling ... terror ... terror is terror ... I was in a state
of total terror at this point. I just sort of figured from the look I got on
this guy, if they just sort of say ... boom ... which can get you really
annoyed ... being put in that position (once you get yourself back on your
feet) ... this guy gets in the car, takes me out to the highway, and he
dumps me ... like a bad movie. Boom.  I roll over, on the side of the
highway, and he's off ... scattering pebbles back in my face.  And I'm there.

Whoa man. I remember the sun, and I remember looking at the green of the
grass, and just thinking it was so beautiful ... and then saying, like,
okay, can I stand? Can I stand?  And I struggled to my feet ... that was not
easy to do ... I did stand up, which I was really happy about.  And I took a
deep breath and then I sort of tried to assess what was happening, because I
couldn't put it together. It didn't match anything.  Two things came into my
mind ... two real
clear instructive survival mechanisms:  Don't tell anyone, because if you go
and tell somebody what just happened, they're going to lock you up in a
loonie bin, you ain't ever coming out.  Find out what happened ... see if
you can walk, get your head together ... I started to trying to think ... it
was impossible. The second thing which came into my mind, which was very
good information for my mind to tell me ... this was pre-Watergate ... get
back to New York. I knew I was close to Philadelphia because I saw the
highway sign. Get back to New York. Get back to the Village. Get back to the
Lower East Side.
Get below 14th Street, in alphabet city. See your friends, and get yourself
together. That's what I was doing.

Aside from total weakness - I really was as weak as a kitten.  The mind I
had for the next five years. Abstract painting. That's the only way I can
describe it. Sort of abstract painting where a platform doesn't have an end,
and then it ends ... and it goes into another geometric shape ... everything
was sort of liquid. The only way I can describe it further ... there was a
logical thinking process but the plotline would drop out of it ... bump ...
it was like being in a bumpy elevator that didn't stop for about five years.
The logical connection was just the ability to think ... it was the perfect
counterinterventionist technique. If you want to jail or knock off or put
the people who are opposing your power structure out of commission ...
whatever drug they gave me, that would do it. Glad they learned something.

I will continue with getting off the highway, because there is a bit more
that's interesting about that ... the unhappiness and the anguish that this
was ... I was living on the street at the time ... the shape that I was in
... is some guy that you pass on the corner who is dirty, and bedraggled,
and his clothes are just yuck ... and he's mumbling to himself and he's out
of his mind ... that was me. I was out of my mind. Part of me was very
solid. I was trying to re-patch all of this stuff that kept on falling apart
... there was one night ... I was wondering the streets ... I was barefoot
... I had eaten some food out of a garbage can ... I found myself rubbing my
hands against the brick wall of a bank until they were bleeding and causing
me pain ... that's when I knew when to stop because my palms were bleeding.
I was saying, "here take my blood but give me back my mind".

W.M.:

That must have been a horrifying experience because at that point you really
didn't know what was done to you ... if it was just the drugs or something
else ... or what combination ... it didn't seem to end.

R.H.C.:

No.  And all my friends left me. There was no support mechanism because I
had been a very solid person that people looked forward to, and gathering
around. I could see them talking, (whispering) ... "what happened to him?"
And then finally people became disgusted with me. Yeah. It was a nightmare.

W.M.:

Just to get a frame of reference ... what year was this?

R.H.C.:

This was the late 1960's ... around 1969.  I came to Canada in the later
part of 70-71 ... let me get off the highway and then we'll get to coming to
Canada.
There are two incidents ... not only the drugging, but the second time I was
screwed up. This happened in the Nixon administration.  The second time I
was screwed up was under Ronald Wilson Reagan.  We'll get into that later.
(Sighs.)

I am on the highway.  It's almost cliche but this hippie van stops, it's
painted, and these hardcore hippies are in the van ... "hey get in the van,
man!!!"  This very nice couple who are the most together in the group are in
the front, and they start talking to me and I'm just lying in the back. They
were so wonderful. I want to thank them again ... if they even hear this.
The woman looked at me and looked at her boyfriend, and said, "this guy's in
trouble, let's take him home."  They took me to their house, and gave me a
bath and fresh clothes to wear, and something to eat.  I wasn't talking very
much, and she asked me where I was going, and I said I was going to New York
City.
She said, "We'll buy you a bus ticket, man. You are in no shape." They drove
me to downtown Philadelphia, we had a cup of coffee together, they bought me
this bus ticket and I went back to New York. I haven't seen them since. That
was part of the "community" I was talking about in those times.

I went through five years of travail ... there was one friend who had been
politically active with me, and then he had left the States, and he had gone
to Montreal ... I was trying everything. I was getting a little better. At
one point I got better enough ... I was living in a Mission and I got a job
as a warehouseman and that's how I got some money. I was really quiet and
into myself, testing the waters ...  I went up to Montreal and everybody who
knew me assumed I had had a bad drug trip which I had ... but I didn't give
it to myself.  This guy said, "you should leave the States, man".  At that
point, peace, love was no more. Cities were burning. Watts was going on.
Detroit and Harlem ... you had the assassinations.  I couldn't keep two
things in my head together ... I was off the chessboard politically as an
activist.

My friend said "you should come up to Canada, it's sane up here" so I moved
up to Montreal and then Montreal was going through a huge upheaval about
French and English which I didn't know a hell of a lot about when I first
got across the border and came to Montreal.  ... Why did you invite me up
here? Go up to British Columbia, man ... there's woods, there's trees.  The
thing to keep in mind is that later I got solidly back together. I was
working as a copywriter at a radio station, I had a rented farm situation. I
was back on my feet. I had chickens (out in B.C.), I had put in a garden. I
chopped wood. It's a healthy environment. You go skinnydipping in a lake and
watch a falcon for a while.
It's a good way to live.

I was doing that. When I got myself back to together again after five years
of not being so, I met a woman and fell in love with her, and she had been
a student activisit and had tanks in the streets and had been a medic in
Madison, Wisconsin. She had bicycled across the country. We got married.
I was with my wife for two or three years. I hadn't told anybody. I had put
it out of my mind. I had gone back to being a writer. I hadn't thought about it.
It was like, "forget about it", and it was a pleasure to forget about it.
One night my wife was holding me and I was shaking and crying and really
going through terror again, and I told her about what had happened. She was
really very strong, she said, "Well, Ron, you're a writer, right?" I said,
"Yes." She said, "Write about it."  

That was the first writing of what has come to be "TRANSGRESSIONS". Up until
I started writing about it, which was cathartic and healthy, there was still
the basic robotic instructions I had given myself at the roadside, which was
"don't tell anybody, they're just going to think you're nuts", you know,
"get yourself together."  I guess at the point where I felt strong enough,
knock on wood, I was together which led me to all of the research I have
done about MKULTRA itself.

W.M.:

After deciding you were going to write about it, what avenues did you pursue
trying to find out what happened to you?

R.H.C.:

I've read all of the Senate Hearings works. I have also read, I believe,
every book that has been written - and there has been some fine work by
different writers - on MKULTRA, and given myself all that background. I'm a
fiction writer. That's what I am ... I have had to become a switch-hitter in
the sense of having had to work for ad agencies and newspapers and trade
journals. I even have my own consulting business as a writer (Perfect
Communications is the name of my consulting business). I know how to do
other types of writing, but I am a fiction writer. I thought that the best
medium for doing this was to write it as a work of fiction and the thing
was, I didn't think that just a first-person story would really give a full
picture of what was going on there. What I have also done is researched
Sidney Gottlieb, he had a very nice farm, he used to like to milk goats.
Yeah. Interesting synchronicity. He was a Jew from the Bronx, and he was in
charge of the CIA's mind control experiments. Just like me. Perfect. Him and
I would have had a fistfight at the school if I had ever met the
son-of-a-bitch.  I have also researched all of the people involved, so
some of the characters in my book ... Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Oliver
North, Tom Charles Huston (he's a fascinating little doo-hickey - he was
Nixon's "Young Guy" who also came from Indianapolis. I wrote a work of
fiction, interestingly. I really do have a rather large talent, and I say
that without an ego. It's a gift, and I have been blessed with it. This book
has had such difficulty being published. It's the interlock, the corporate
interlock, it goes on forever.  The story that I wrote is fiction, but it's
based on the factual data.

W.M.:

During this time that you were trying to get information on MKULTRA and
specifically what happened to you, which program you were involved in, what
kind of response were you getting from the government. You were making
information requests. How much information were they giving you, how much
was blacked out?

R.H.C.:

The interesting thing is I have gone through different administrations --
Carter, Ford, Reagan, Bush, and now Clinton. There would almost be four or
five different answers to that.  Basically nothing happened until Carter
came in. I don't know if everything that happened during the Carter
administration using those fellows' terminologies was a "limited hangout",
which means tell them a bunch of phoney baloney stuff that will keep them
occupied and we'll keep the good stuff to ourselves.  Colby, the guy who
just died (Wayne: "mysteriously ...") ... (laughter)  I try to stick to the
facts ... if I don't know it for sure I'm not going to throw around
accusations.  
He was the head of the CIA at that point. Let's just make something clear
about that because that's really the aggregious lack ... my main thrust in
all of this is to achieve two things:  truth and justice.  Believe me, I have 
gone through a desire for revenge. That was hell on earth. I believe that,
thank God, I have worked out my desire for revenge. I don't think it's possible
for me to put this to rest for myself without truth or justice being
established.

During Carter's time and the hearings that went on ... Carter came on and
said I'm not going to tell you any lies ... that's what he claimed while he
had the largest defence budget, even larger than Reagan's as far as I
understand,
but nonetheless. Good cop, bad cop. Jimmy's a nice guy, he builds houses for
poor people.  During that period, there was information being released.
I sent off many Freedom of Information requests ... I write a great Freedom
of Information letter ... I have done it often enough. First of all you get
denied, and you go through that whole thing. The basic game they operate on
is, you want something, tell me where it is and I'll go look for it ... but
there have been some very good, helpful people in the government libraries
as well ... there were lots of covert activities and lots of documentation
so even if you want to get something for somebody, to some degree you have
to know what to look for. The most reassuring thing that came out during the
Carter administration, without me going to the files and dragging all that
stuff out, was, "okay, thank God, I'm not nuts, I am not alone, this really
happened ...".

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You've been listening to an interview with Ronald Howard Cohen about his
abduction and severe drugging by the CIA and military as part of the mind
control experimentation. Stay tuned next week for Part 2 of this interview
on CKLN, The International Connection, 88.l
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