On April 22, 1993, both BBC1 and BBC2 showed on their main evening news bulletins a rather lengthy piece concerning America's latest development in weaponry -- the non-lethal weapons concept. David Shukman, BBC Defence Correspondent, interviewed (Retired) US Army Colonel John B. Alexander and Janet Morris, two of the main proponents of the concept. The concept of non-lethal Weapons is not new. Non-lethal wcapons have been used by the intelligence, police and defense establishments in the past. Several western governments have used a variety of non-lethal weapons in a more discreet and covert manner. It seems that the US government is about to take the first step towards their open use.

The current interest in the concept of non-lethal weapons began about a decade ago with John Alexander. In December 1980 he published an article in the US Army's journal, Military Review, "The New Mental Battlefield," referring to claims that telepathy could be used to interfere with the brain's electrical activity. This caught the attention of senior Army generals who encouraged him to pursue what they termed "soft option kill" technologies.

After retiring from the Army in 1988, Alexander joined the Los Alamos National Laboratories and began working with Janet Morris, the Research Director of the US Global Strategy Council (USGSC), chaired by Dr. Ray Cline, former Deputy Director of the CIA. I examine the background of Janet Morris and John Alexander in more detail below.

Throughout 1990 the USGSC lobbied the main national laboratories, major defence contractors and industries, retired senior military and intelligence officers. The result was the creation of a Non-lethality Policy Review Group, led by Major General Chris S. Adams, USAF (retired), former Chief of Staff, Strategic Air Command. They already have the support of Senator Sam Nunn, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. According to Janet Morris, the military attache at the Russian Embassy has contacted USGSC about the possibility of converting military hardware to a non-lethal capability.

In 1991 Janet Morris issued a number of papers giving more detailed information about USGSC's concept of non-lethal weapons. Shortly after, the US Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, VA, published a detailed draft report on the subject, titled "Operations Concept for Disabling Measures." The report included over twenty projects in which John Alexander is currently involved at the Los Alamos National Laboratories.

In a memorandum dated April 10, 1991, titled "Do we need a Non-lethal Defense Initiative?", Paul Wolfwitz, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, wrote to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, "A US lead in non-lethal technologies will increase our options and reinforce our position in the post-Cold War world. Our Research and Development efforts must be increased."

To support their non-lethal weapons concept, Janet Morris argues that while "war will always be terrible..., a world power deserving its reputation for humane action should pioneer the principles of non-lethal defense." In "Defining a non-lethal strategy", she seeks to establish a doctrine for the use of non-lethal weapons by the US in crisis "at home or abroad in a life serving fashion." She totally disregards the offensive, lethal aspects inherent in some of the weapons in question -- or their misuse -- should they become available to 'rogue' nations. Despite her arguments that non-lethal weapons should serve the US's interests "at home and abroad by projecting power without indiscriminately taking lives or destroying property," she admits that "casualties cannot be avoided."

Closer examination of the types of weapons to be used as non-lethal invalidates her assertions about their non-lethality. According to her white paper, the areas where non-lethal weapons could be useful are "regional and low intensity conflict (adventurism, insurgency, ethnic violence, terrorism, narco-trafficking, domestic crime)." She believes that "by identifying and requiring a new category of non-lethal weapons, tactics and strategic planning" the US can reshape its military capability "to meet the already identifiable threats" that they might face in a multipolar world "where American interests are globalized and American presence widespread."

[...]

JOHN ALEXANDER

The entire non-lethal weapons concept opens up a new Pandora's Box of unknown consequences. The main personality behind it is retired Colonel John B. Alexander. Born in New York in 1937, he spent part of his career as a Commander of Green Berets Special Forces in Vietnam, led Cambodian mercenaries behind enemy lines, and took part in a number of clandestine programmes, including Phoenix.

He currently holds the post of Director of Non-lethal Programs in the Los Alamos National Laboratories.

Alexander obtained a BSc. from the University of Nebraska and an MA from Pepperdine University. In 1980 he was awarded a PhD from Walden University for his thesis "To determine whether or not significant changes in spirituality occur in persons who attended a Kubler-Ross life/death transition workshop during the period June through February 1979." His dissertation committee was chaired by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.

He has long been interested in what used to be regarded as 'fringe' areas. In 1971, while a Captain in the infantry at Schofield Barracks, Honolulu, he was diving in the Bimini Islands looking for the lost continent of Atlantis. He was an official representative for the Silva mind control organization and a lecturer on Precataclysmic Civilisations.

Alexander is also a past President and a board member of the International Association for Near Death Studies; and, with his former wife, Jan Northup, he helped Dr C.B. Scott Jones perform ESP experiments with dolphins.

PSI-TECH

Retired Major General Albert N. Stubblebine (former Director of US Army Intelligence and Security Command) and Alexander are on the board of a 'remote viewing' company called

The company also employs Major Edward Dames (ex Defence Intelligence Agency), Major David Morehouse (ex 82nd Airborne Division), and Ron Blackburn (former microwave scientist and specialist at Kirkland Air Force Base). PSI-TECH has received several government contracts. For example, during the Gulf War crisis the Department of Defense asked it to use remote viewing to locate Saddam's Scud missiles sites. Last year (1992) the FBI sought PSl-TECH's assistance to locate a kidnapped Exxon executive.

With Major Richard Groller and Janet Morris as his co-authors, Alexander published "The Warrior's Edge" in 1990. The book describes in detail various unconventional methods which would enable the practitioner to acquire "human excellence and optimum performance" and thereby become an invincible warrior. The purpose of the book is "to unlock the door to the extraordinary human potentials inherent in each of us. To do this, we, like governments around the world, must take a fresh look at non-traditional methods of affecting reality. We must raise human consciousness of the potential power of the individual body/mind system -- the power to manipulate reality.

We must be willing to retake control of our past, present, and ultimately, our future.

Alexander is a friend of Vice President Al Gore Jnr, their relationship dating back to 1983 when Gore was in Alexander's Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) course.

NLP "presented to selected general officers and senior executive service members" a set of techniques to modify behaviour patterns. Among the first generals to take the course was the then Lieutenant General Maxwell Thurman, who later went on to receive his fourth star and become Vice-Chief of Staff of the Army and Commander Southern Command. Among other senior participants were Tom Downey and Major General Stubblebine, former Director of the Army Intelligence Security Command.

"In 1983, the Jedi master provided an image and a name for the Jedi Project." Jedi Project's aim was to seek and "construct teachable models of behavioural/physical excellence using unconventional means." According to Alexander, the Jedi Project was to be a follow-up to Neuro-Linguistic Programming skills. By using the influence of friends such as Major General Stubblebine, who was then head of the US Army Intelligence and Security Command, he managed to fund Jedi. In reality the concept was old hat, re-christened by Alexander. The original idea, which was to show how "human will-power and human concentration affect performance more than any other single factor" using NLP skills, was the brainchild of three independent people; Fritz Erikson, a Gestalt therapist, Virginia Satir, a family therapist, and Erick Erickson, a hypnotist.

JANET MORRIS

She has been conducting remote-viewing experiments for fifteen years. She worked on a research project investigating the effects of mind on probability in computer systems. Her husband, Robert Morris, is a former judge and key member of the American Security Council.

In a recent telephone conversation with the author, Janet Morris confirmed John Alexander's involvement in mind control and psychotronic projects in the Los Alamos National Laboratories. Alexander and his team have recently been working with Dr. Igor Smirnov , a psychologist from the Moscow Institute of Psychocorrections. They were invited to the US after Janet Morris' visit to Russia in 1991. There she was shown the technique which was pioneered by the Russian Department of Psycho-Correction at Moscow Medical Academy. The Russians employ a technique to electronically analyze the human mind in order to influence it. They input subliminal command messages, using key words transmitted in 'white noise' or music.

Using an infrasound very low frequency-type transmission, the acoustic psycho-correction message is transmitted via bone conduction -- ear plugs would not restrict the message. To do that would require an entire body protection system. According to the Russians the subliminal messages bypass the conscious level and are effective almost immediately.
[...]
Alexander and C.B. Jones are members of the AVIARY, a group of intelligence and Department of Defense officers and scientists with a brief to discredit any serious research in the UFO field. Each member of the Aviary bears a bird's name. Jones is FALCON; John Alexander is PENGUIN.
[...]
Just before the publication of my first paper unmasking two members of the AVIARY, I was visited by two of their members (MORNING DOVE and HAWK) who had travelled to the UK with a message from the senior ranks advising me not to go ahead with my expose. I rejected the proposal.

Immediately after the publication of that paper, and with the full knowledge that myself and a handful of colleagues knew the true identities of their members, John B. Alexander confessed that he was indeed a member of the AVIARY, nicknamed PENGUIN. The accuracy of our information was further confirmed to me by yet another member of the AVIARY -- Ron Pandolphi, PELICAN. Pandolphi is a Ph.D. in physics and works at the Rocket and Missile section of the Office of the Deputy Director of Science and Technology, CIA.

In his book, Out There, the New York Times journalist Howard Blum refers to "a UFO Working Group" within the Defense Intelligence Agency. Despite DIA's repeated denials, the existence of this working group has been confirmed to me by more than one member of the group itself, including an independent source in the Office of Naval Intelligence. The majority of the group's members are senior members of the AVIARY: Dr. Christopher Green (BLUEJAY) from the CIA, Harold Puthoff (OWL), ex-NSA; Dr. Jack Verona (RAVEN), DoD, one of the initiators of the DlA's Sleeping Beauty project which aimed to achieve battlefield superiority using mind-altering electromagnetic weaponry; John Alexander (PENGUIN); and Ron Pandolphi (PELICAN).

The mysterious "Col. Harold E. Phillips" who appears in Blum's Out There, is none other than John B. Alexander.

John Alexander's position as the Program Manager for Contingency Missions of Conventional Defense Technology, Los Alamos National Laboratories, enabled him to exploit the Department of Defense's Project Reliance "which encourages a search for all possible sources of existing and incipient technologies before developing new technology in-house" to tap into a wide range of exotic topics, sometimes using defense contractors, e.g., McDonnell Douglas Aerospace. I have several reports, some of which were compiled before his departure to the Los Alamos National Laboratories when he was with Army Intelligence, which show Alexander's keen interest in any and every exotic subject -- UFOs, ESP, psychotronics, anti- gravity devices, near-death experiments, psychology warfare and non-lethal weaponry.

John Alexander utilises the bank of information he has accumulated to try to develop psychotronic, psychological and mind weaponry. He began thinking about non-lethal weapons a decade ago in his paper, "The New Mental Battlefield." He seems to want to become a 'Master.'

If they ever succeed in this ambition, the rest of us ordinary mortals had better watch out.

On to Part 5 of the Penguinian Series