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A Man Fighting the Thought Police
So-called manipulation weapons, targeting the human mind, are a part of military arsenals. A campaigner who believes he's a victim of sinister mind games speaks to John Woodcock. In Knaresborough, assaults on the senses are not confined to the pleasures of market day. In his home on High Street, John Allman claims that the unseen voices which began bombarding him six years ago are more intrusive than usual.
While strangers delve into his mind, he is doing much the same. Reading my thoughts. "You're thinking, 'this chap is crackers, paranoid, on the lunatic fringe'."
As he readily admits, the more he reveals, the less credible he becomes. Consider the basics of his story. In 1998, while living in Hampshire but working in Hull, he says he began to be targeted by male and female voices. He has no idea who they are. Though he's reluctant to divulge details of what he's heard, the intruders know a great deal about him.
That he's 51, a Christian, software developer, divorced with four children and three grandchildren, and now married to a South African nurse whose mother was a friend of Nelson Mandela.
"It's like I'm listening to the radio through an ear-piece, except that the content is extremely personal. I considered the possibility that I was going mad but a psychiatrist told me he could find no evidence that I was schizophrenic."
Allman began seeking other possible explanations and says he strayed into the Big Brother world of "manipulation" weapons. Playing mind games with sound for military and political purposes isn't new. The concept emerged in the Second World War, developed during the Cold War, and today, the application of so-called inner-voice, behaviour-influencing technologies, is confirmed through sources such as official US Army reports.
Richard Condon's novel, The Manchurian Candidate, described, 45 years ago, the sinister possibilities. A new film version shifts the plot from the Korean War to the first Gulf War, and casts big business as villains instead of the Soviets, but the central theme is still brainwashing. A captured soldier is programmed with a micro-chip implant and years later activated to assassinate a US Presidential candidate.
Is it that far removed from reality? One military website refers to a "non-lethal weapon which includes a neuro-electromagnet device which uses microwave transmission of sound into the skull of persons or animals..."
In Knaresborough, a silver-haired, well-groomed man surrounded by files and research papers, believes he's a victim.
Allman has faced ridicule, nervousness and apathy since founding an organisation called Christians Against Mental Slavery four years ago. The 12 members include his wife, mother, an African bishop, a scientist in Baltimore, a former FBI agent, a German psychologist, and an 83-year-old American called Jim, said to be a veteran campaigner against the abuse of human rights.
Allman says his are being invaded every time the voices tune into his head. Why choose him? "I have no idea. I'm sure they, whoever 'they' are, have far bigger fish to fry in the long term. That I'm part of some terrifying experiment is my only explanation.
"Maybe ordinary people like me are being used to test the latest technology. Interfering with thought processes is already possible, but how far does it extend?
"Mind-control applications are one thing, but what messages are they intending to deliver? Obvious targets are political and military leaders."
His group is campaigning to have non-consensual monitoring or influence of human thought, through technology, to be declared a crime against humanity. Back in 1999, the European Parliament called for the banning of such techniques.
The government's position is that existing legalisation provides adequate safeguards. Some are unconvinced.
Christians Against Mental Slavery had a stand at this year's Labour Party Conference, presented a 68-page report into its research, and collected 89 signatures for a petition.
Allman says he's spending about 15,000 a year of his own money on the campaign, and acknowledges it's a struggle. "What are you going to write? Is this man mad, deluded – or is he onto something?"
john.woodcock@ypn.co.uk
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