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The following article is taken from New Dawn magazine - a magazine
exposing consensus reality and publishing suppressed information. 6
issue subscription for US$30 can be obtained from: GPO Box 3126FF,
Melbourne, 3001, AUSTRALIA.

CULT AWARENESS NETWORK BRAINWASHERS URGED ATTACK ON WACO

"The tragedy in Waco, Texas between officers of the Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms, FBI agents and the Davidian religious sect resulting in
the deaths and wounding of officers and sect members is the direct
responsibility of the very experts that are now reaping admiration
for their involvement," stated Dr. George Robertson, a well-known U.S.
expert on religious freedom issues and anti-cult groups.

As the events have unfolded, Robertson says, it is becoming more and
more apparent that the major questions concerning who was behind the
massive raid on the Branch Davidian church, have real answers that
point directly to the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). Questions like,
How did the ATF agents come to believe that storming the compound was
the only answer? and What was the source of all the allegations which
brought the charges in the first place? The cult hysteria surrounding
the Texas sect began a little more than a year ago when Rick Ross,
deprogrammer from CAN began targeting the Davidian Sect for potential
kidnappings and deprogramming paid for by relatives of members in the
group. One of those victims, who reportedly had been successfully
transformed as an enemy of the sect during a deprogramming at the home
of CANs national spokesperson, Priscilla Coates in Southern
California, began reporting alleged accusations against the Davidians.
The charges included illegal weapons stockpiling, child abuse,
immorality, and authoritative control over the group by its leader,
David Koresh. The charges were not unlike those that are
systematically levelled at every group by former members who have
experienced the brainwashing of a CAN deprogramming session.

Whether the charges are true or false, Robertson said, remains to be
seen. The group had illegal weapons charges brought previously against
them and they were dismissed. The charges of child abuse are
apparently false since the Texas Department of Social Services have
examined the children which were released and found to be perfectly
normal, happy and very well educated children. It would appear from
those who have left the compound during the siege that people there
are free to leave at any time they desire to do so. The allegations do
not appear to have merit and if they are found to be true, there are
legal remedies for handling the situation. According to Dr. Isaac
Brooks, Director of the Deprogramming Survivors Network in Washington,
D.C., the tactics of the deprogramming network mechanism is to stir a
paranoia, fear, and publicity in efforts to get relatives and
brainwash them into leaving the group or belief system they have
adopted.

The deprogramming process, Dr. Brooks maintains, is nothing more than
old fashioned brainwashing used on prisoners of war. They kidnap the
victim or deceive them into going with them and then hold them against
their will in total isolation, while they bombard the victim for hours
or even days on end with hate literature, video tapes, and propaganda
against the group they had joined. The ordeal that the victims must
endure is not unlike that experienced by Patricia Hearst during her
SLA kidnapping some years ago and which resulted in her joining forces
with her kidnappers. Psychologists have reported that it is not
uncommon for a victim in such situations to develop an identity with
their captors and often become their most ardent supporters.

Ross reported on U.S. Televisions Up To The Minute programme that he
had consulted with ATF agents on the Waco sect and told them about the
guns in the compound. His information had come from a former member
which he had deprogrammed from the group, he said. In contrast, former
McLennan County District Attorney, Victor Feazell, called the ATF
storm troopers and warned prior to the massacre that the Feds are
preparing to kill them and bury their own mistakes. If theyd called
and talked to them, the Davidians wouldve given them what they wanted,
Feazell told Associated Press. Feazell reported in a Houston newspaper
that he had handled similar charges against the group earlier and the
members were acquitted on all charges. We treated them like human
beings, instead of storming the place. They were extremely polite
people, Feazell said.

According to various media reports the central deprogramming adviser
to the ATF and FBI on the Branch Davidians was, in fact, the self-same
Rick Ross. Ross is a convicted jewel thief.

Renowned investigative journalist Alexander Cockburn wrote a revealing
column in the Los Angeles Times shortly after the Waco holocaust
entitled From Salem to Waco, By Way of the Nazis. The subtitle was:

The Davidians were a cult and thus exempt from justice and normal
rules of evidence.

Cockburn began by noting:

It now seems likely that the M-60 tank knocked over kerosene for the
compounds lamps... and almost everyone burned alive. This appalling
event took place on April 19, 1993, the 50th anniversary of the Nazi
assault on the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. The Nazis too regarded cults
as ripe candidates for persecution. On June 20, 1937, the SS
Reichsfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich ordered the banning and persecution
of...the Seventh-day Adventists from which the Branch Davidians
sprang.

Cockburn also exposed the role of the Cult Awareness Network and Rick
Ross. The role in Waco of the Cult Awareness Network, whose members
are respectfully cited in the press as experts, may well have been
crucial. The networks president, Patricia Ryan, was quoted in the
Houston Post on April 9 as saying that the FBI should use any means
necessary to arrest Koresh, including lethal force. Soon after the
initial February 28 raid, another deprogrammer named Rick Ross, long
associated with the network, said on television that he consulted with
the ATF before the raid. The networks former executive director,
Priscilla Coates, raised allegations of child abuse....

Dr. James Lewis of the Institute for the Study of American Religion
stated that: Whatever Ross may have communicated to the ATF, it is
certain he promoted the worst stereotypes of alternative
religions...scholars have time and time again rejected this stereotype
as simply unfounded. Ross' advice to the ATF helped create an
adversarial position between the ATF and FBI, and the Davidians. In an
interview with the Waco Tribune Herald, he described the Davidians as
a very dangerous group and issued dire warnings of their potential
violence. Ross was publicly described by CAN Executive Director
Cynthia Kisser as among the half-dozen best deprogrammers in the
country. Ross is a member of two national committees for the Union of
American Hebrew Congregations and an outspoken critic of Christian
fundamentalist groups. Ross has boasted of more than 200
deprogrammings.

The Waco mass murder did not satiate the deprogramming zeal of the
Cult Awareness Network. For as Alexander Cockburn wrote in his
article: And as a final horrible irony in this saga of Nazi-like
affront to religious tolerance, the deprogrammers are demanding that
they be allowed to exercise their dark arts on the burned Davidian
survivors so that they testify correctly and desist from maintaining -
as they have that no mass suicide was under way.

What is CAN?

A review of CANs origins shows that the Cult Awareness Network
actually began as the Citizens Freedom Foundation (CFF) in 1974.
Convicted felon Ted Patrick was instrumental in the groups formation.
According to founding member Henrietta Crampton, as reported in The
New York Times on September 2, 1974, Mr. Patrick had been the prime
force in organizing the group.

At every CAN convention, Patrick has been an honoured guest. He only
missed the 1990 CAN convention because he was involved with an
unsuccessful deprogramming attempt on an Amish woman and her daughter.
Patrick, who has faced numerous legal actions, arrests and convictions
for his crimes, describes deprogramming in his 1976 book Let Our
Children Go:

Deprogramming is the term, and it may be said to involve kidnapping at
the very least, quite often assault and battery, almost invariably
conspiracy to commit a crime, and illegal restraint.

In his book, Patrick explained his methods of removing persons from
religious groups, including his account of the kidnapping of a
born-again Christian who was resisting abduction by bracing himself
against the getaway car. As he describes it in Let Our Children Go,
Patrick forced his victim into the car by squeezing the mans genitals
until he let out a howl. His victim then doubled up, releasing his
hold on the car roof.

Then I hit, Patrick wrote, shoving him head first into the back seat
of the car and piling in on top of him. Another one of Patricks
attacks was an unsuccessful deprogramming attempt in 1975 on a
Catholic woman from Canada, which resulted in an official government
prohibition against Patrick entering Canada. Ted Patrick, like his CAN
associates, has no preference in who he deprograms, as long as the
money is good. Since its founding, CFF changed to CAN, obtained more
prominent sponsors and broadened its affiliations; but it has always
remained the same - a clearinghouse and referral service for people
who, for a fee, will do whatever it takes to break a targeted
individual from his or her beliefs.

Bucknell University religion
professor Larry Shin told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1992 that
deprogramming is the most destructive of the legacies of the great
American cult scare....CAN is much closer to a destructive cult than
most of the groups they attack. From the mid-1980s onward, CAN has
functioned as the most active of a throng of so-called anti-cult
organisations which sprang from the ravages of the counterculture.
Such groups as the Jewish Community Relations Councils (JCRC) Task
Force on Missionaries and Cults, the American Family Foundation, the
International Cult Education Project and the Interfaith Coalition of
Concern about Cults, all share interlocking boards of directors and
funding. Through these associations, CAN has enjoyed the support and
protection of powerful elements of the U.S. eastern liberal financial
establishment.

The former President of CAN, Michael Rokos, abruptly
resigned his position amid a flurry of publicity exposing that he had
been found guilty on charges of soliciting sex with a Baltimore vice
squad officer posing as a minor. According to an affidavit from
arresting officer Joseph G. Wyatt, Rokos solicited him, saying, I want
you to tie me up, put clothespins on my nipples, and make me suck your
d*ck.

CANs MK-Ultra Hired Guns

In addition to its criminal connections, CAN relies upon and draws
support from a small band of psychiatrists and psychologists known for
anti-religious stands, bigotry, and involvement in violent psychiatric
practices. Also many of the CIAs pioneer experimenters from the
MK-Ultra project [see New Dawn No. 15] are today board members and
advisers to the Cult Awareness Network and the American Family
Foundation. For example, psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West, who has long
been active in the American Psychiatric Association, has been
instrumental in advising and setting the direction of the Cult
Awareness Network. In 1977, Dr. West was exposed on the front page of
the New York Times as being funded by the CIA to perform experiments
in mind destruction using LSD, as part of the MK-Ultra project. In
John Marks book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, West was
exposed as a pioneer of LSD and mind control experiments funded by the
CIA. While there has been much discussion of the catastrophic drug
culture of the 1960s, almost no attention has been given to the role
CIA-linked psychiatrists like Dr. West played in creating this chaotic
era. West is also notorious for promoting racism under the guise of
treatment. In a 1972 proposal for a centre to study violence, West
unveiled an Orwellian plan including electronic mind-control implants,
chemical castration and psychosurgery to make troublesome minorities
more tractable. In a 1983 speech to the Citizens Freedom Foundation,
psychiatrist West proposed his plan for eradicating religion. Using a
medical model, West claimed that certain religions should be treated
just as one would treat cancerous cells: destruction. In the 1960s, as
mentioned above, in one of his mind-control experiments, done at the
Oklahoma City Zoo, West killed an elephant with a massive overdose of
LSD. West had himself taken LSD the day before. West, who serves on
the advisory board of the Cult Awareness Network and on the advisory
board of another anti-religious group, the American Family Foundation,
has been a keynote speaker at CAN conferences and a mentor for such
groups for more than 15 years. During his career, he has not only been
associated with drug experiments, but also with brutal psychiatric
practices such as psychosurgery (lobotomy) and electric shock.

Who's Who Among Brainwashers

Another CAN favourite and frequent speaker at CAN conventions is
psychiatrist Robert Lifton, a close associate of West. Lifton is also
linked to the Anti-Defamation League, and is often cited as an
authority on mind control. However, scholars have rejected Liftons
attempt to extend his studies of American prisoners of war - men
subjected to extreme coercion and duress at the hands of Chinese
forces during the Korean War - to such activities as child rearing,
Catholic orders and other religious movements. Indeed, authorities
have characterised his comparisons as far-fetched, absurd and cannot
be taken seriously. Making no attempt to hide where his sympathies
lie, Lifton was a prominent speaker at a conference on youth religions
in Germany in 1978 sponsored by the German Union of Child Psychiatry.
During his talk, he expressed his anti-religious views to a group
whose members included former Nazi psychiatrists who had been active
in formulating and propagating Nazi ideas on eugenics. Lifton worked
with Dr. Margaret Singer and others at the Walter Reed Army Medical
Centre on Chinese Communist thought reform, the assault upon identity
and belief. His book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,
is the bible for those who believe in brainwashing. Deprogramming
victims frequently are forced to read Liftons writings during their
ordeal. What Lifton describes in his book as thought reform, is
remarkably similar to what CAN calls deprogramming.

Another figure
depended upon heavily by the Cult Awareness Network to lend an aura of
credibility to its activities and to give some justification to its
hate crimes is psychologist Margaret Singer. Singers unsubstantiated
theories have provided expert justifications for deprogrammings - as
well as her means of making a living. She has been a frequent speaker
or participant at CAN events, and both CFF and CAN have promoted her
in their newsletters. Singer, who is also an advisory board member of
the American Family Foundation, got her start as an Army psychiatrist,
studying Korean War veterans and prisoners of war. She worked in
projects with Drs. Edgar Schein and Albert Biderman, both exposed in
Marks The Search for the Manchurian Candidate as running the parallel
military MK-Ultra programs. Singers writings are also cited by the CIA
front, the Society for the Study of Human Ecology, Inc. Rabbi Maurice
Davis is a member of the CAN advisory board who works closely with Dr.
John G. Clark of Harvard in arranging deprogrammings. Davis worked in
the MK-Ultra program at the U.S. Public Health Services prison in
Lexington, Kentucky with Dr. Harris Isbell, who was administering
psychotropic drugs to inmates. One subject was kept on LSD for 77
days. Herbert Rosedale, president of the American Family Foundation,
is a partner in the New York law firm Parker, Flatau, Chapin and
Klimpl, chief representative of Israeli-owned Bank Leumi and Bank
Hapoalim. After Galen Kellys indictment for conspiracy to kidnap Lewis
du Pont Smith, Rosedale wrote to the court a glowing
character-reference letter praising CAN-linked kidnapper Kelly.
Rosedale shares with Galen Kelly an inveterate animus towards members
of new religious movements. In a 1982 article he went so far as to
state that members of a religious faith with which he disagreed were
diseased and responsible for infecting the community. Rosedales
associate on the Advisory Board of the American Family Foundation
(AFF) is Dr. Louis J. West, who has been quoted in the press
describing the purposes and activities of AFF and CAN as [to] kidnap
and deprogram cult members. Rabbi Arnold James Rudin and his wife
Marcia Rudin are leaders of the interreligious group within the Cult
Awareness Network and the American Family Foundation and frequent
spokesmen for the American Jewish Committee. Marcia Rudin is head of
the International Cult Education Project, a spinoff of the Bnai Brith.

CAN - ADL Link

Of special significance to the Waco tragedy is the close relationship
between the Cult Awareness Network and the Anti-Defamation League of
Bnai Brith. Not only do the two networks have over-lapping members but
they also share intelligence on targeted groups. Herb Brin, a leading
backer of the ADL and publisher of the Los Angeles Heritage newspaper
revealed the ADLs involvement in the Branch Davidian affair. In a
signed headline story which appeared in the April 16 edition of his
newspaper, Brin inadvertently exposed the role that the ADL played in
helping engineer the FBI/BATF slaughter at the Branch Davidian church
complex in Waco. In an article hailing the ADLs now-infamous [see New
Dawn No.19] spy network, Brin stated:

U.S. and Texas authorities have precise documentation (from ADL, of
course) on the Branch Davidian cult in Waco and how it operated in the
past. Brins revelation comes as no surprise once we understand the
ADLs intimate relationship with CAN. It now seems clear that both the
Anti-Defamation League and the Cult Awareness Network did not want the
Branch Davidians to come out alive. Had David Koresh and the Branch
Davidians gone to trial (which is very much what they desired in order
to tell their side of the story), the course of legal discovery would
have revealed the way the ADL and CAN had been prodding the FBI and
BATF to action. The funding for the Cult Awareness Network and the
American FamilY Fondation comes from families who hire their
deprogrammers, and from donations from establishment foundations. Many
of the latter are connected to the Anti-Defamation League. The
American Family Foundation (AFF) has been funded, for the most part,
by a handful of top Wall Street family foundations. Among them are the
Scaife Family Foundation, the J.M. Foundation, and the Pew Foundation.
In recent years, the San Francisco-based Swig Foundation has provided
crucial support. Foundation trustee Melvin Swig is a national
commission member of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and a national
executive board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC). The single largest financial promoters of the AFF for the
past decade have been the Bodman Foundation and the Achellis
Foundation. The Bodman and Achellis foundations combined to grant over
a half-million dollars to the AFF during the first decade of its
existence. The two separate foundations have overlapping trustees and
officers and are both housed in the New York City law offices of
Morris and McVeigh, which also acts as general counsel for both
foun-dations. Both the Bodman and Ache llis foun-dations and the
Morris and McVeigh law firm are chock-full of New York-based
intelligence and banking families, who generally avoid the political
limelight, preferring to shape national, political and cultural policy
through private foundation grants.

Australias CAN

A new religious vilification (or anti-cult) group is currently setting
up a network around Australia. Calling itself CultAware this
Australian version of CAN is headed by Sydney-based Tony and Joan
McClelland and is associated with Melbourne counsellor and Lubavitch
Rabbi Raphael Aron of Gateway Counselling, and self-proclaimed
Christian cult experts Jan Groenveld of Brisbane and Rev. Adrian Van
Leen of Perths Concerned Christian Growth Ministries. How any genuine,
self-respecting Jew or Christian could be associated with the likes of
the Cult Awareness Network or the American Family Foundation is truly
amazing. Yet, in his book Combating Cult Mind Control, CAN-linked
deprogrammer Steven Hassan references both Concerned Christian Growth
Ministries of Perth and Raphael Aron, former director of Melbournes
Jewish Centre.

Only days after the Waco tragedy Larry Tye wrote a hate-mongering
piece titled Waco Reborn? which appeared in most of Australias major
daily newspapers. The writer opens by warning his readers, If you
think the tragic debacle at Waco, Texas, was bad, consider who could
be next. Are there other cults with similar destructive potential? You
bet there are. A few columns later Tye quotes notorious CAN advisor
Dr. Louis J. West, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and respected
authority on cults: There are many Jonestowns and Wacos potentially
sitting out there. Then betraying the anti-religion, totalitarian
agenda, Tye informs us that: What really made him mad, Dr. West added,
was that law enforcement officials and community leaders were so
obsessed with safeguarding freedoms of religion and speech that they
didnt respond to cults until it was too late.

Yes, unfortunately, as long as religion haters and thought police of
the ilk of West and CAN are permitted to influence law enforcement
agencies, the media and government departments, the possibility of
another Waco type mass murder cannot be ruled out. Are there other
cults with similar destructive potential? Yes, there most certainly
are, the most dangerous and criminal being the Cult Awareness Network!

Taken from New Dawn No.20 with permission.
Subcriptions: $25 for 6 issues; $40 for 12 issues.
GPO Box 3126FF, Melbourne, 3001.


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