[Infowarrior] - Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind a DHS Contract

[Richard Forno]

The Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind a DHS Contract
By Sharon Weinberger Email 09.20.07 | 2:00 AM

http://www.wired.com/print/politics/security/news/2007/09/mind_reading

A dungeon-like room in the Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow is
used for human testing. The institute claims its technology can read the
subconscious mind and alter behavior.

Photo: Nathan Hodge

MOSCOW -- The future of U.S. anti-terrorism technology could lie near the
end of a Moscow subway line in a circular dungeon-like room with a single
door and no windows. Here, at the Psychotechnology Research Institute, human
subjects submit to experiments aimed at manipulating their subconscious
minds.

Elena Rusalkina, the silver-haired woman who runs the institute, gestured to
the center of the claustrophobic room, where what looked like a dentist's
chair sits in front of a glowing computer monitor. "We've had volunteers, a
lot of them," she said, the thick concrete walls muffling the noise from the
college campus outside. "We worked out a program with (a psychiatric
facility) to study criminals. There's no way to falsify the results. There's
no subjectivism."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone to many strange places in
its search for ways to identify terrorists before they attack, but perhaps
none stranger than this lab on the outskirts of Russia's capital. The
institute has for years served as the center of an obscure field of human
behavior study -- dubbed psychoecology -- that traces it roots back to
Soviet-era mind control research.

What's gotten DHS' attention is the institute's work on a system called
Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology, or SSRM Tek, a
software-based mind reader that supposedly tests a subject's involuntary
response to subliminal messages.

SSRM Tek is presented to a subject as an innocent computer game that flashes
subliminal images across the screen -- like pictures of Osama bin Laden or
the World Trade Center. The "player" -- a traveler at an airport screening
line, for example -- presses a button in response to the images, without
consciously registering what he or she is looking at. The terrorist's
response to the scrambled image involuntarily differs from the innocent
person's, according to the theory.

Gear for testing MindReader 2.0 software hangs on a wall at the
Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow. Marketed in North America as
SSRM Tek, the technology will soon be tested for airport screening by a U.S.
company under contract to the Department of Homeland Security.
Photo: Nathan Hodge

"If it's a clean result, the passengers are allowed through," said
Rusalkina, during a reporter's visit last year. "If there's something there,
that person will need to go through extra checks."

Rusalkina markets the technology as a program called Mindreader 2.0. To sell
Mindreader to the West, she's teamed up with a Canadian firm, which is now
working with a U.S. defense contractor called SRS Technologies. This May,
DHS announced plans to award a sole-source contract to conduct the first
U.S.-government sponsored testing of SSRM Tek.

The contract is a small victory for the Psychotechnology Research Institute
and its leaders, who have struggled for years to be accepted in the West. It
also illustrates how the search for counter-terrorism technology has led the
U.S. government into unconventional -- and some would say unsound --
science.

All of the technology at the institute is based on the work of Rusalkina's
late husband, Igor Smirnov, a controversial Russian scientist whose
incredible tales of mind control attracted frequent press attention before
his death several years ago.

Smirnov was a Rasputin-like character often portrayed in the media as having
almost mystical powers of persuasion. Today, first-time visitors to the
institute -- housed in a drab concrete building at the Peoples Friendship
University of Russia -- are asked to watch a half-hour television program
dedicated to Smirnov, who is called the father of "psychotronic weapons,"
the Russian term for mind control weapons. Bearded and confident, Smirnov in
the video explains how subliminal sounds could alter a person's behavior. To
the untrained ear, the demonstration sounds like squealing pigs.

Elena Rusalkina demonstrates the terrorist-screening tool. She says it works
faster than a polygraph and can be used at airports.
Photo: Nathan Hodge

According to Rusalkina, the Soviet military enlisted Smirnov's
psychotechnology during the Soviet Union's bloody war in Afghanistan in the
1980s. "It was used for combating the Mujahideen, and also for treating
post-traumatic stress syndrome" in Russian soldiers, she says.

In the United States, talk of mind control typically evokes visions of
tinfoil hats. But the idea of psychotronic weapons enjoys some
respectability in Russia. In the late 1990s, Vladimir Lopatin, then a member
of the Duma, Russia's parliament, pushed to restrict mind control weapons, a
move that was taken seriously in Russia but elicited some curious mentions
in the Western press. In an interview in Moscow, Lopatin, who has since left
the Duma, cited Smirnov's work as proof that such weaponry is real.

"It's financed and used not only by the medical community, but also by
individual and criminal groups," Lopatin said. Terrorists might also get
hold of such weapons, he added.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Smirnov moved from military research
into treating patients with mental problems and drug addiction, setting up
shop at the college. Most of the lab's research is focused on what it calls
"psychocorrection" -- the use of subliminal messages to bend a subject's
will, and even modify a person's personality without their knowledge.

The slow migration of Smirnov's technology to the United States began in
1991, at a KGB-sponsored conference in Moscow intended to market once-secret
Soviet technology to the world. Smirnov's claims of mind control piqued the
interest of Chris and Janet Morris -- former science-fiction writers turned
Pentagon consultants who are now widely credited as founders of the
Pentagon's "non-lethal" weapons concept.

In an interview last year, Chris Morris recalled being intrigued by Smirnov
-- so much so that he accompanied the researcher to his lab and allowed
Smirnov to wire his head up to an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Normally
used by scientists to measure brain states, Smirnov peered into Morris's EEG
tracings and divined the secrets of his subconscious, right down to intimate
details like Morris' dislike of his own first name.

The underlying premise of the technology is that terrorists would recognize
a scrambled terrorist image like this one without even realizing it, and
would be betrayed by their subconscious reaction to the picture.
Photo: Nathan Hodge

"I said, 'gee, the guys back at home have got to see this,'" Morris
recalled.

The Morrises shopped the technology around to a few military agencies, but
found no one willing to put money into it. However, in 1993 Smirnov rose to
brief fame in the United States when the FBI consulted with him in hope of
ending the standoff in Waco with cult leader David Koresh. Smirnov proposed
blasting scrambled sound -- the pig squeals again -- over loudspeakers to
persuade Koresh to surrender.

But the FBI was put off by Smirnov's cavalier response to questions. When
officials asked what would happen if the subliminal signals didn't work,
Smirnov replied that Koresh's followers might slit each other's throats,
Morris recounted. The FBI took a pass, and Smirnov returned to Moscow with
his mind control technology.

"With Smirnov, the FBI was either demanding a yes or a no, and therefore our
methods weren't put to use, unfortunately," Rusalkina said, taking a drag on
her cigarette.

Igor Smirnov, founder of the Psychotechnology Research Institute, died of a
heart attack in 2005. Smirnov is best known in the United States for
consulting with the FBI during the 1993 Waco siege.
Photo: Nathan Hodge

Smirnov died in November 2004, leaving the widowed Rusalkina -- his
long-time collaborator -- to run the institute. Portraits of Smirnov cover
Rusalkina's desk, and his former office is like a shrine, the walls lined
with his once-secret patents, his awards from the Soviet government, and a
calendar from the KGB's cryptographic section.

Despite Smirnov's death, Rusalkina predicts an "arms race" in psychotronic
weapons. Such weapons, she asserts, are far more dangerous than nuclear
weapons.

She pointed, for example, to a spate of Russian news reports about "zombies"
-- innocent people whose memories had been allegedly wiped out by mind
control weapons. She also claimed that Russian special forces contacted the
institute during the 2003 Moscow theater siege, in which several hundred
people were held hostage by Chechen militants.

"We could have stabilized the situation in the concert hall, and the
terrorists would have called the whole thing off," she said. "And naturally,
you could have avoided all the casualties, and you could have put the
terrorists on trial. But the Alfa Group" -- the Russian equivalent of Delta
Force -- "decided to go with an old method that had already been tested
before."

The Russians used a narcotic gas to subdue the attackers and their captives,
which led to the asphyxiation death of many of the hostages.

These days, Rusalkina explained, the institute uses its psychotechnology to
treat alcoholics and drug addicts. During the interview, several patients --
gaunt young men who appeared wasted from illness -- waited in the hallway.

But the U.S. war on terror and the millions of dollars set aside for
homeland security research is offering Smirnov a chance at posthumous
respectability in the West.

Smirnov's technology reappeared on the U.S. government's radar screen
through Northam Psychotechnologies, a Canadian company that serves as North
American distributor for the Psychotechnology Research Institute. About
three years ago, Northam Psychotechnologies began seeking out U.S. partners
to help it crack the DHS market. For companies claiming innovative
technologies, the past few years have provided bountiful opportunities. In
fiscal year 2007, DHS allocated $973 million for science and technology and
recently announced Project Hostile Intent, which is designed to develop
technologies to detect people with malicious intentions.

One California-based defense contractor, DownRange G2 Solutions, expressed
interest in SSRM Tek, but became skeptical when Northam Psychotechnologies
declined to make the software available for testing.

"That raised our suspicion right away," Scott Conn, CEO and president of
DownRange, told Wired News. "We weren't prepared to put our good names on
the line without due diligence." (When a reporter visited last year,
Rusalkina also declined to demonstrate the software, saying it wasn't
working that day.)

While Conn said the lack of testing bothered him, the relationship ended
when he found out Northam Psychotechnologies went to SRS Technologies, now
part of ManTech International Corp.

Semyon Ioffe, the head of Northam Psychotechnologies, who identifies himself
as a "brain scientist," declined a phone interview, but answered questions
over e-mail. Ioffe said he signed a nondisclosure agreement with Conn, and
had "a few informal discussions, after which he disappeared to a different
assignment and reappeared after (the) DHS announcement."

As for the science, Ioffe says he has a Ph.D in neurophysiology, and cited
Smirnov's Russian-language publications as the basis for SSRM Tek.

However, not everyone is as impressed with Smirnov's technology, including
John Alexander, a well-known expert on non-lethal weapons. Alexander was
familiar with Smirnov's meetings in Washington during the Waco crisis, and
said in an interview last year that there were serious doubts then as now.

"It was the height of the Waco problem, they were grasping at straws," he
said of the FBI's fleeting interest. "From what I understand from people who
were there, it didn't work very well."

Geoff Schoenbaum, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland's School of
Medicine, said that he was unaware of any scientific work specifically
underpinning the technology described in SSRM Tek.

"There's no question your brain is able to perceive things below your
ability to consciously express or identify," Schoenbaum said. He noted for
example, studies showing that images displayed for milliseconds -- too short
for people to perceive consciously -- may influence someone's mood. "That
kind of thing is reasonable, and there's good experimental evidence behind
it."

The problem, he said, is that there is no science he is aware of that can
produce the specificity or sensitivity to pick out a terrorist, let alone
influence behavior. "We're still working at the level of how rats learn that
light predicts food," he explained. "That's the level of modern
neuroscience."

Developments in neuroscience, he noted, are followed closely. "If we could
do (what they're talking about), you would know about it," Schoenbaum said.
"It wouldn't be a handful of Russian folks in a basement."

In the meantime, the DHS contract is still imminent, according to those
involved, although all parties declined to comment on the details, or the
size of the award. Rusalkina did not respond to a recent e-mail, but in the
interview last year, she confirmed the institute was marketing the
technology to the United States for airport screening.

Larry Orloskie, a spokesman for DHS, declined to comment on the contract
announcement. "It has not been awarded yet," he replied in an e-mail.

"It would be premature to discuss any details about the pending contract
with DHS and I will be happy to do an interview once the contract is in
place," Ioffe, of Northam Psychotechnologies, wrote in an e-mail. Mark Root,
a spokesman for ManTech, deferred questions to DHS, noting, "They are th