MKUltra The Making Of An Assassin - Derren Brown Investigates

On the 5th of June 1967 Robert Kennedy was assassinated in the Ambassador hotel lobby. His assassin Sirhan Sirhan claims to have no memory of the incident, and to this day claims that he was brainwashed.

Between 1955 and 1973 in America the CIA carried out their not-so clandestine program MKUltra. The MKUltra project was started on the order of CIA director Allen Welsh Dulles.

Its aim was to apparently develop mind-controlling drugs for use against the Soviet bloc, largely in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea.

In 1977, and later in 2001, certain MKUltra documents were declassified under the Freedom OF Information act. The contents of the papers shocked America.

A whole host of nefarious experiments were uncovered, and it was found that the CIA experimented on American citizens without their knowledge.

An alleged part of the MKUltra program, was the CIA's attempt to create contract killers out of normal, everyday citizens. It is this part of the program that Sirhan alleges that he was a victim of.

This was perhaps their most frightening experiment of all. The idea that somebody could be made to kill another human being without their knowledge, and with no memory of the event or details surrounding it; is a dark one to say the least.

There has always been debate around what you can get a person to do under hypnosis. Most experts insist that you can not get somebody to go against their nature, or to harm themselves whilst in a hypnotic trance.

That was until Derren Brown, an English entertainer specialising in illusion and hypnosis, decided to do an experiment to see if it is possible to get a normally gentle human being, to commit murder.

Derren Brown - To Find A Killer

In his book, Tricks of The Mind, Brown states that he has always been fascinated with hypnotism. For a long time he was obsessed with working out the hypnotic state.

He says that he wanted to find out if it was real, or if there was always some kind of element of playing along, for fear of spoiling a performance.

Brown did various hypnotic experiments on his friends and peers at university in Bristol. In the end he came to the conclusion that some people are more naturally suggestible than others.

However even he didn't think that he could ever persuade somebody to kill another human being. Therefore some of the motivation for this program was to find out once and for all if the hypnotic state was a bonafide altered state. Because nobody would ever shoot somebody just so that they didn't ruin a show.

So the first part of the show was used to show how he chose the perfect candidate for his experiment. We see how he puts certain people under the kind of physical strain that they would not otherwise be able to withstand.

By the end of the first part of the program, Derren has chosen his subject. Now it is time to start the same brainwashing experiment allegedly used by the CIA in MKUltra.

Stage One - Marksman Mode

When questioned about the Robert Kennedy murder, Sirhan claimed that he thought he was firing at a target on a range. He also alleges that just before the shooting, a woman in a polka dot dress, came up to him and pinched him on the shoulder, which immediately put him in range mode.

Derren Brown attempts to recreate that mode by taking his subject to a shooting range.

Before continuing, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider that this program was made in England. There are very few gun ranges in the United Kingdom and they are not easily accessible by members of the public.

Derren's subject, like 99% of people in the UK, had never fired a gun in his life. He claimed his only experience with firearms was having gone paintballing a couple of times.

This was apparent when he fired at the target for the first time. He got nowhere near the middle and even missed the target completely with a couple of shots.

Brown then uses hypnosis and visualisation to get his subject to become a better marksman.

The results are stunning, and need to be seen to be believed. Brown turns his subject into a deadly marksman, and then anchors the feeling using a mobile phone ringtone.

Stage Two - Induced Amnesia

In March 2011, Sirhan Sirhan the man who assassinated Senator Robert Kennedy in a packed hotel lobby, was denied parole for the 14th time.

The board said that he did not show enough remorse for his crime, nor take full responsibility for it. They said that they did not trust the fact that he said he could remember some things about the incident, and not others.

Sirhan insisted that not only did he not remember shooting Kennedy, that details in the weeks leading up to the assassination were sketchy in his memory.

In this part of the program, Derren Brown uses suggestive techniques to induce temporary Amnesia in his subject. Once he is confident he can do this, he moves onto the programming phase.

Brown anchors a feeling of amnesia in his subject's mind using a polka dot pattern. He then immediately tests the state and sees that indeed he has managed to induce temporary amnesia in his subject.

He moves onto the next stage

Stage Three - The Dry Run

Even though Brown has been very careful not to give the game away as to why the subject is participating in his show. Derren still wants to test just how real his subject's responses are.

Brown arranges for his subject to meet him and his production crew in a restaurant. The place has been rigged with hidden cameras and all the diners and staff are aware that something might happen. However they have all been instructed to completely ignore it if it does.

Derren has set it up so that he will use a polka dot pattern on a menu, and the ringtone he used in the marksman mode, to see if he can get his subject to 'assassinate' a diner with a water pistol.

This is an interesting scene and one I won't give away further, as it is worth watching.

Stage Four - The Hit

The target is national treasure, and probably the wittiest man in England, Stephen Fry. The subject has been told that Derren and Fry are going to be doing something together and that is connected with the show the subject thinks he's doing.

He gets told the address and is instructed to meet Derren at the theatre Stephen Fry is performing at. Everywhere is rigged and the stage is set.

Will this gentle person, who has never fired a gun before, go into a trance and shoot Stephen Fry dead?

I urge you to watch, it is fascinating, it is 45 minutes of some the most compelling viewing you'll ever see.

DID YOU WATCH IT? WHAT DID YOU THINK? DO YOU THINK SIRHAN SIRHAN IS TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT CIA BRAINWASHING; OR IS IT ALL BUNKUM AND SILLY CONSPIRACY THEORY? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!

Cryptogee