Porton Down (now P related)

[Thomas Eckhardt]

On Thu, 30 May 2019 08:12:31 GMT
   "peterthooper at juno.com" <peterthooper at juno.com> wrote:



> Porton Down joins my mental Britain, henceforth to be numbered with Stonehenge, Bletchley Park, Fleet Street, the Venerable Bede, the White Visitation, Porlock, Edward the Confessor, Cockney rhyming slang, and Ethelred the Unready...

As it well should. Porton Down, aka the Ministry of Defence's Defence 
Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), is situated in Wiltshire, close to 
Salisbury and the UK's largest military training area -- the only place 
where I ever saw a warning sign like this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leonandloisphotos/2514460035
There is a direct link between Porton Down and GR. As Kai Frederik Lorentzen 
has pointed out, there can be not much doubt that the real-life model for 
Pointsman was William Sargant, Pavlovian psychiatrist, friend of Robert 
Graves and author of "The Battle for the Mind. The Mechanics of 
Indoctrination, Brainwashing and Thought Control" which I believe must have 
been a source for GR (see for example "Introduction", p. xxi on the only 
copy of Pavlov's "Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes. Vol. 2. Conditioned 
Reflexes and Psychiatry" which is "The Book" "rotated" between GR's 
London-based psychiatrists).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sargant
The book, written with Graves' assistance:
https://archive.org/details/BattleForTheMind-Sargant
After WW II, Sargant was involved with MK-ULTRA on the British side:
"Sargant was (...) a British psychiatrist best remembered for promoting 
treatments such as psychosurgery, deep sleep treatment, electroconvulsive 
therapy and insulin shock therapy. Sargant worked in some capacity for MI5 
(and possibly MI6), and corresponded with the infamous psychiatrist Ewen 
Cameron (who was performing MKULTRA research in Canada). While he reputedly 
wanted the British government to distance itself from the CIA project (he 
called it “blacker than black”), he remained committed to the principle of 
mind control, and allegedly became the link between British Intelligence and 
MKULTRA."
https://auticulture.com/blog/2015/12/12/the-gates-of-hell-mkultra-robert-graves-william-sargant-wassons-magic-mushroom-occult-yorkshire-10/
Also, Sargant played a role in the murder/suicide of Frank Olson (cf. 
"Wormwood"):
"According to Thomas, who was a lifelong friend of Sargant's, Olson told 
Sargant that he had visited secret joint American-British testing and 
research installations near Frankfurt. Thomas's hypothesis is that the 
C.I.A. was testing interrogation and truth serums there -- not on monkeys 
but on human subjects, ''expendables,'' captured Russian agents and 
ex-Nazis. Thomas says that Olson confessed to Sargant that he had witnessed 
something terrible, possibly ''a terminal experiment'' on one or more of the 
expendables. Sargant heard Olson out and then reported to British 
intelligence that the young American scientist's misgivings were making him 
a security risk. He recommended that Olson be denied further access to 
Porton Down, the British chemical-weapons research establishment."
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/01/magazine/cia-what-did-the-cia-do-to-his-father.html
This could make for some innovative porn:
"According to R.D.Laing, Sargant was so fond of electroconvulsion therapy 
(ECT) that he used to give it to himself and organised parties at which 
orgies occurred."
https://thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/info.html
And then there is this:
"The interest in psychedelic drugs came not only from anti-psychiatry but 
also from mainstream psychiatry, such as William Sargant. He reviewed The 
doors of perception by Aldous Huxley for the British Medical Journal. It 
seems likely he was involved with trials of LSD as a truth serum at Porton 
Down between 1953-5 (see BBC News story)."
http://criticalpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2016/12/psychedelic-drugs-and-psychiatry.html
The BBC news story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4745748.stm
MK-ULTRA is an important context for both COL49 and GR.