Cryptonyms: Code Names

ARTICHOKE

CIA study into techniques to induce unwitting subjects to commit assassinations.

BLUEBIRD

CIA mind control project operating between 1949 and 1977 with the eventual purpose of "alteration of sex patterns" and "discrediting by aberrant behaviour."

ELF

A Navy project involving Extremely Low Frequency electromagnetic waves with bizarre effects and an equally strange history. Male monkeys experienced a 10 percent weight gain, female monkeys lower blood triglyceride levels when exposed to ELF, one of the few declassified results of the experiment. On July 4, 1977, the world's largest known "Downburst" storm struck 15 miles south of the ELF facility: winds were measured at 150 miles per hour and one child was killed. The storm caused 50 million dollars in damage and 800,000 acres of forest were devastated. In 1978, residents reported mild electrical shocks whenever contact was made between the drains of their house and the water supply. A referendum on ELF was held among local voters: an orchaestrated campaign by GE Sylvania (why the multinational corporation undertook the campaign is still unclear) won ELF's continuance by 103 votes. When a House Appropriations Committee was told there was a bull being used in a fertility study at ELF, the Project was ordered by Deputy Defense Secretary William Clements to purchase one. The Navy kept the bull for six years, then shot it.

HEADSPEAR

A Navy project to implant electrodes in the heads of sharks to steer them by radio signals. Human recruits were substituted in the final test because not enough sharks were available.

HOODWINK

A FBI COINTELPRO operation designed to pit the Mafia against the Communists. It was a dismal failure.

KEELHAUL

A US Army operation to forcibly send anti-Soviet Russian POWs back to the USSR after World War II. Many of those sent back were executed.

MK-ULTRA

A CIA project undertaken in the 1940s in the field of "mind control", ranging across a wide variety of operations, from identifying victims of brainwashing to attempting to program unwitting persons into performing assassinations. The CIA alsu undertook research into extrasensory perception and "remote viewing" under the auspices of MK-ULTRA, though documentation indicates that little value was placed on it's results.

PAPERCLIP

The program under President Truman designed to acquire German scientists after World War II. Though Truman specifically forbade the acquisition of loyal Nazi party members, Operation Paperclip was rife with corruption and many war criminals found asylum within it's classified structure. One that did not was General Gehlen, the "Butcher of Russia": his intelligence information and the network that produced it, made up almost entirely of Nazi extremists was traded for his immunity from prosecution to the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA) directly, without Presidential knowledge.

VEIL

The covert action compartment codeword within the CIA for the latter part of the Reagan Administration.

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