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Electromagnetic Weapons

US Intelligence Community's Misuse of Electromagnetic Weapons

"The Secretary of Energy under Clinton, Hazel O’Leary, warned that over a 40 year period, 500,000 had been unwitting test subjects for military research on non-lethal weapons."

Dear friends,

This is a four-page summary of a thoroughly researched paper that may be the best study ever on the US intelligence community's past and continuing use and abuse of electromagnetic weapons. Largely developed and used in top secret projects, the use of these weapons often violates the accepted standards of human rights worldwide. By educating ourselves, we can better make a difference.

With best wishes for a transformed world,
Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
Former White House interpreter and whistleblower

Note: The footnotes and links in this summary contain some astonishing information. For the full 33-page report, see this webpage. Footnote numbers from the full report have been retained here.

US Electromagnetic Weapons and Human Rights
By Peter Phillips, Lew Brown, and Bridget Thornton

This research explores the current capabilities of the US military to use electromagnetic (EMF) devices to harass, intimidate, and kill individuals and the continuing possibilities of violations of human rights by the testing and deployment of these weapons.

In the 1950s and 60s the CIA began work to find means for influencing human cognition, emotion and behavior. Through the use of the psychological understanding of the human being as a social animal and the ability to manipulate a subject’s environment through isolation, drugs and hypnosis, US funded scientists have long searched for better means of controlling human behavior. This research has included the use of wireless directed electromagnetic energy under the heading of “Information Warfare” and “Non Lethal Weapons.”

New technological capabilities have been developed in black budget projects[1] over the last few decades—including the ability to influence human emotion, disrupt thought, and present excruciating pain through the manipulation of magnetic fields. The US military and intelligence agencies have at their disposal frightful new weapons which could be directed against the public in the event of mass protests or civil disturbance.

Psychological Warfare, Information War, and mind control may seem to be exotic topics, but the impact of these technologies and techniques is profound. Our minds are being impacted through a longstanding series of programs aimed at manipulating public opinion through intelligence agencies, think tanks, corporate media and a host of non-governmental organizations designed to engender fear, division and uncertainty in the public.[18]

According to Mary C. FitzGerald of the Hudson Institute, new-concept weapons, such as laser, electromagnetic, plasma, climatic, genetic and biotechnological are the central principle driving the modernization of national defense. The potential for these weapons to be used for both good and bad deserves a great deal of attention, but there is little to be found in the media or discussed by our administration.[20]

There is a long history that illustrates US Intelligence operations had tragic results for many involved. There was, however, no public debate surrounding these black operations because they were classified under the guise of national security. MKULTRA, Project PANDORA, plutonium testing, and many more projects conducted by the DOD and the CIA were exposed by committees led by Senators Rockefeller and Church in the 1970s.[86] However, tighter restrictions on human experiment including accountability and transparency did not occur until 1997, when President Clinton instituted revised protocols on human experiments.[87]

Official reports insist that the research involving experiments during the 1950s through the 1970s was destroyed. Yet, the scientists involved went without punishment, free to continue their careers.[88] Given the levels of ongoing EMF technology research today, and the recent retroactive approval of torture approved by the Military Commissions Act, it may be that human testing is occurring under post-9/11 national security protocols.

Crowd Control using the Electromagnetic Spectrum

A peek into the US arsenal of weapons is like a look into a science fiction film. Various military research labs provide a view of the current technology available to enhance US soldiers in the field and manipulate the emotions and behaviors of the perceived enemy.

The electromagnetic spectrum has provided the military with an expanse of weapons, which are operational and in military and private use today in the form of millimeter waves,[102] pulsed energy projectiles, and high power magnetic weapons.

Raytheon outfitted Humvees with their Silent Guardian Protection System, a device capable of heating the skin to 1/64 of an inch, causing instant pain similar to intense sunburn, [103] with the goal to facilitate dispersing a crowd. Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs) are another form of weaponry that is used to paralyze a victim with pain. Voice to Skull directed acoustic devices are neuro-electromagnetic non-lethal weapons that can produce sounds within the skull of a human.[110]

A technology known as Hypersonic Sound is used in a similar fashion. According to its inventor, Elwood Norris of American Technology Corporation (ATC), the handheld speaker can focus sound waves directly at a person without anyone else hearing the sound. The technology is being tested by corporations such as McDonald’s and WalMart to direct advertisements into a consumer’s head.

The Long Rage Acoustical Device (LRAD),[111] is used by the military in situations such as crowd control, mass notification, and perimeter enforcement. For instance, an unruly mob may not hear a warning to disperse with traditional acoustic technology, or border enforcement agents may need to warn an approaching intruder to turn away or face bodily harm.

This technology has advantages over lethal force, yet it also has the potential to inflict physical harm, emotional manipulation, and death. According to Defense Update, the LRAD can produce a 150-decibel acoustic beam from 300 meters away. The human threshold for pain is between 120 to 140 decibels.[112] This technology can inflict permanent damage and death despite its classification as a non-lethal weapon.

The New York City police used the LRAD at the Republican National Convention and it was also used in Miami at a WTO Free Trade protests.[114] In a 2003 New York Times article Mr. Norris demonstrates his technology to the reporter. At 1% of capacity, the reporter’s eyes hurt, and hours later still experienced a headache.[113]

In September 2006, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne announced that crowd control weapons should be tested on Americans first. “If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” said Wynne. [99]

Mind Manipulation

By studying and modeling the human brain and nervous system, the ability to mentally influence or confuse personnel is also possible. It would be possible to create depression and a feeling of overwhelming hopelessness by the induction of a current into the electrical circuit of the brain.[123] Through sensory deception, it may be possible to create synthetic images or holograms to confuse an individual’s visual sense or, in a similar manner, confuse his senses of sound, taste, touch, or smell.

There are several ways that microwaves can affect humans. For instance, weapons that can heat the skin for crowd control do what the military states, but they are capable of much more. Thermal heating weapons act like a car radio; you can change the frequencies to get different effects. The electromagnetic weapons send an impulse through the nervous system. They can transfer sounds.

Extremely low frequencies also have the capability to send messages directly into the head when only the receiver can hear it. These frequencies can also imbed signals on radio broadcasts to create a feeling of fear or anxiety. The US military would embed these signals on the Muslim prayer broadcasts during the first Gulf War.

During the 1990’s, in both presidential administrations, non-lethal weapons such as these and others received priority funding. The Secretary of Energy under Clinton, [Hazel] O’Leary, warned that over a 40 year period, 500,000 had been unwitting test subjects for military research on non-lethal weapons.

We know very little about the actual levels of experimentation, research, and capabilities of EMF weapons technologies due to high levels of US government security. The problem is that the military’s role is to be paranoid and think up scenarios where the worst can happen then prepare for this in order to protect the people from a hypothetical future event. According to the defense budget report, 40% of the budget is dedicated to black projects. There is no oversight and no public knowledge.

There needs to be a debate in the public sphere because while these weapons appear frightening, they also have amazing therapeutic potentials. There is the possibility of quicker healing and curing disease. And what is just as important about government transparency concerning weapons is the transparency of life saving science being kept from the public. If we have the ability to cure and the government or military hides this, we have just as big a problem.

The Military-Industrial Complex

Military contractors run our wars in concert with power elites. The money involved in the non-lethal weapons industry is growing and military contractors are reaping the profits. Corporations also have the power to determine which studies will reach the public.[125] And the military will allow negative or alarming studies to remain unreported or lost in a sea of classified documents.

Emmett Paige Jr., Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence declared in 1996 that, “Well over a decade ago, a Soviet general reportedly said ‘to prevail in the next conflict, one must control the electromagnetic spectrum.’" The Department of Defense is committed to ensuring that “in the next conflict it is we who will control the spectrum."[133]

The US Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate released a paper in 2004 which presents “Crowd Control Modeling and Simulation.” This report discusses behavioral changes [that can be made in] human populations.[141] The use of electromagnetic weapons to alter the emotional state, hamper the ability of an enemy or US citizens to think clearly, and result in chaos and pain are problematic for a number of reasons:

  1. Creating fear, anxiety confusion and irrational behavior within an individual or a population is counterproductive to the operations of a free society and to the execution of warfare. Chaos only breeds the need for greater and greater means of physical repression.
  2. These weapons leave no tell tale clues. There are no bullet holes or gross damage.
  3. They are operated from a great distance, meaning that the operator has no feedback as to the effects of his or her actions.
  4. Any device that invades a persons mind is a violation of human rights.

The control and manipulation of a human brain is a terrifying possibility. Lieutenant Colonel Timothy L. Thomas, US Army (ret), published an article in the military journal Parameters which likens the mind as a new battlefield. He quotes a Russian army major in relation to mind wars, “It is completely clear that the state which is first to create such weapons will achieve incomparable superiority.”[147]

Under the cover of secrecy provided by claims of national security, researchers in service to higher circle policy elites have implanted electrodes into human subjects to control minds and tortured prisoners and the mentally ill in efforts to find better “brainwashing” techniques. They have poisoned thousands with atomic testing, experimented on young children using drugs, trauma and hypnosis, sprayed major cities with biological agents to prepare for a future attack, overthrown governments, instituted mass killings, and engaged in every form of information distortion. [See this verifiable list of incidents where humans beings were used as guinea pigs.]

The general position of the agencies who do comment on weapons that exploit the lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum is that they have no biological effect at all, except for what are dubbed “thermal effects,” in essence heating of human cells.[149] Research into this subject has shown that this position is inaccurate, and that the effects of electromagnetic radiation weapons on human beings are in fact both chilling and dramatic. The case of Dr. Eldon Byrd, a medical engineer, should be considered with great weight.

After working on the Polaris submarine, which carried long-range nuclear weapons, Byrd developed non-lethal weapons with reversible effects. He regarded this as a humanitarian alternative to ‘punching holes in people and having their blood leak out’ in battle. His inventions used magnetic fields at biologically active wave frequencies to affect brain function.

Byrd could put animals to sleep at a distance and influence their movements. When the success of his research became evident, suddenly he was pulled off the project and it went “black.” His believes the electromagnetic resonance weapons he developed have been used for psychological control of civilians rather than for exigencies in battle.[150]

Unscrupulous individuals who ascribe to a “might makes right” philosophy may well find the ways and means of employing these technologies against those who would oppose their plans. The dangers here are great, in that the individual who would direct the torture and killing of innocents is usually removed from the actual fact. It is left up to lesser authorities to administer the beatings, bullets, and mind/body bending technologies.

Power elites who fund and support efforts at supplanting the will of the people do so from on high. Their ability to redirect public attention toward external threats and away from their own motivations in effect silences opposition to their programs. By controlling the flow of information in society, the power elites provide the public with a limited choice in all matters that pertain to machinations of government and corporate control.


Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored. Principle researchers on this report were Lew Brown and Bridget Thornton. For the full 33-page report, see this webpage.



[1] Black budgets are government funded projects that are classified as secret to Congress and the American people. For an in-depth analysis on the topic, see Weiner, Tim, Blank Check: The Pentagon’s Black Budget, Warner: 1990.

[18] For an analysis on the interlocking of the corporate media, think tanks and government organizations, see Peter Phillips, Bridget Thornton and Lew Brown “The Global Dominance Group and the US Corporate Media” in Censored 2007, Seven Stories Press.

[20] In researching this article, there are no instances of remarks by senior White House, Pentagon, or Congressional officials that specifically address the human effects of non-lethal EMF weapons. A search in Lexis Nexis from 2001-2006 returned no results in American mainstream media.

[86] The Church and Rockefeller Committee reports can be accessed through the Assassination Archives and Research Center: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/contents.htm

[87] Memorandum of March 27, 1997 – "Strengthened Protections for Human Subjects of Classified Research." [Federal Register: May 13, 1997 (Volume 62, Number 92)] [Page 26367-26372].

[88]Scientific American talks about the work of Jose Delgado and states that Dr. Delgado stopped doing research as late as the 1990’s, see: John Horgan, “The Forgotten Era of the Brain”, Scientific American, September 26, 2005. [Edited version available here]

[99] Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press, 9/12/2006. In addition to this comment, the Air Force released a declassified document located at the website of the Federation of American Scientists, (http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/hamilton.pdf) directing the acquisitions team from the media. The author is the USAF principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition, management and logistics, Darlene Druyun: Effective immediately, I do not want anyone within the Air Force acquisition community discussing any of our programs with the media (on or off the record). This includes presenting program briefings in any forums at which the media may be present.”

[102] A detailed study conducted by Andrei G. Pakhomov, Yahya Akyel, Olga N. Pakhomova, Bruce E. Stuck, and Michael R. Murphy with the Brooks Air Force Base, Human Effectiveness Directorate, offers a scientific analysis of the effects of millimeter waves, “Current State and Implications of Research on Biological Effects of Millimeter Waves: A Literature Review”, McKesson BioServices (A.G.P., Y.A., O.N.P.), U. S. Army Medical Research Detachment of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (B.E.S.), and Directed Energy Bioeffects Division, Human Effectiveness Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory (M.R.M.), Brooks Air Force Base, San Antonio, TX.

[103] US Non Lethal Weapons for Iraq http://www.oft.osd.mil/library/library_files/article_461_Boston%20Globe.doc

[110] Definition from the Center for Army Lessons Learned, Fort Leavenworth, KS: “Nonlethal weapon which includes (1) a neuro-electromagnetic device which uses microwave transmission of sound into the skull of persons or animals by way of pulse-modulated microwave radiation; and (2) a silent sound device which can transmit sound into the skull of person or animals. NOTE: The sound modulation may be voice or audio subliminal messages. One application of V2K is use as an electronic scarecrow to frighten birds in the vicinity of airports. http://call.army.mil/products/thesaur/00016275.htm

[111] The LRAD is another invention of Elwood Norris of American Technology Corporation.

[112] Jurgen Altmann, “Acoustic Weapons: A Prospective Assessment,” Science and Global Security, Vol. 9, p. 13.

[113] Marshall Sella, “The Sound of Things to Come”, New York Times, March 23, 2003.

[114] Amanda Onion, “RNC to Feature Unusual Forms of Sound”, Aug. 25, 2004, ABC News

[123] To access Lenz’s Law online, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz%27s_law/

[125] From Microwave News, July 2006, “Radiation Research and The Cult of Negative Results”: “When we investigated who sponsored the microwave-DNA papers published in Radiation Research, we discovered that four out of five were paid for by the wireless industry — notably Motorola — and/or the US Air Force, both of which have a long history of trying to control or suppress EMF research. Indeed, industry and the USAF paid for more than 75% of all the negative genotox studies, that is those published in all the various journals.”

[133] United States Department of Defense Speech, Volume 11, Number 83, “Electromagnetic Spectrum: Key to Success in Future Conflicts”, http://cryptome.org/jya/emskey.htm.

[141] Louis Slesin, “Radiation Research and The Cult of Negative Results”, Microwave News, July 31, 2006.

[147] Timothy L. Thomas, The Mind Has No Firewall, Parameters, Spring 1998, pp. 84-92.

[149] H. Pollack, “Epidemiologic data on American personnel in the Moscow embassy”, Bull N Y Acad Med., 1979 Dec;55(11):1182-6.

[150] "Military and Civilian Perspectives on the Ethics of Intelligence" – Report on a Workshop at the Department of Philosophy Claremont Graduate University, September 29, 2000, Jean Maria Arrigo, Ph.D.. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy Paper presented to The Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics Springfield, Virginia January 25-26, 2001

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