The Survivorship Notes for September is now available online at: https://survivorship.org/notes-and-journal/
Articles in this issue include:
Information on the SMART Conference Online Videos and Transcripts, recent mk-ultra hearing and historical articles, Jeffrey Epstein and survivor books. https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2026-conference/2026-conference-video-presentations-and-powerpoints/
Articles
(Please note, these articles may contain violence or triggering information)
Robert D Reed Publishers Self's Stony Soil: Trafficked Children: An Autobiographical Novella in Verse by Wendy Hoffman Written in free-style poetry, a novella, Self's Stony Soil reveals the horrors of sex trafficking. A child is trafficked. Taken by airplanes to other countries, she was packed tight into cages, abused by politicians, the wealthy, royalty, and known people in the world. She has amnesia until late in life. That begins the healing of these deep scars. She begins to find her true self. This is her story.
"Self's Stony Soil speaks to the lifelong consequences to victims of sex trafficking and their efforts to reclaim their humanity and autonomy. Sex trafficking robs the individual of free will. It is demoralizing and soul-crushing. But Self's Stony Soil reveals even the fragility of a damaged life can reveal hidden strength and the perseverance to overcome the nightmare of sex trafficking and lead to growth, healing, and peace.” https://rdrpublishers.com/collections/psychology/products/selfs-stony-soil-trafficked-children-an-autobiographical-novella-in-verse https://ritualabuse.us/smart/wendy-hoffman/
Judge approves Bank of America's $72 million settlement with Epstein accusers - The women accused the bank of ignoring suspicious transactions by Epstein. A federal judge approved the $72.5 million settlement between Jeffrey Epstein's victims and Bank of America, the third financial institution to publicly reach such a settlement. "The settlement class has been properly served," Judge Jed Rakoff decided Thursday.
The women, suing collectively under the pseudonym Jane Doe, accused Bank of America of ignoring suspicious transactions by Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial. Bank America agreed to settle the lawsuit in March while still insisting it did not facilitate Epstein's sex trafficking crimes.
Among the transactions the plaintiffs alleged were suspicious were payments to Epstein by Leon Black, who stepped down as chief executive of Apollo Global Management after an independent review commissioned by the company found he paid Epstein $158 million for estate planning.
https://abcnews.com/US/judge-final-approval-bank-americas-72-million-settlement/story?id=136002279
San Francisco Survivors Achieve $395 Million Settlement SAN FRANCISCO, CA, June 30, 2026 – SNAP lauds the $395 million settlement by the San Francisco Catholic archdiocese to settle more than 500 lawsuits for clerical sexual abuse, an important first step in achieving justice for survivors. https://snapnetwork.org/2026/06/30/san-francisco-survivors-achieve-395-million-settlement/
Mind Control Documents & Links - Evidence mk-ultra occurred
This page includes information on mk-ultra, the CIA, mind control, Operation Paperclip and the Nazis, the 1995 congressional hearings, the 2010 veterans vs CIA court case, Artichoke, the CIA Supreme Court cases, Ewen Cameron and the Sleep Room and the MK/Naomi project. https://ritualabuse.us/mindcontrol/mc-documents-links/
Luna Announces Hearing on MKULTRA Experiments and Its Impact on Public Trust WASHINGTON—Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets Chairwoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) today announced a hearing on “Mind Control and Accountability: Uncovering the Truth of the CIA’s MKULTRA Experiments.” During the hearing, members will examine the history and timeline of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) MKULTRA project and its original classification and how the project meets the CIA’s obligation to protect the United States. Members will also analyze the intelligence community’s unwillingness to declassify information related to MKULTRA and how the lack of transparency has reduced Americans’ trust in government institutions.
“The intelligence community has covered up the nature and classification of the MKULTRA experiments for decades. Americans have been misdirected repeatedly and deserve transparency and accountability from the CIA. The intelligence community’s unwillingness to deliver the truth has fueled dangerous conspiracy theories and eroded public trust in the federal government. This hearing aims to explore the history of the MKULTRA experiments, how they have impacted Americans’ wellbeing, and how the intelligence community can win back trust,” said Task Force Chairwoman Luna. https://oversight.house.gov/release/luna-announces-hearing-on-mkultra-experiments-and-its-impact-on-public-trust/
Congress Reopens the CIA's MKULTRA Files as Witnesses Call for Answers The House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets held a hearing June 30 titled “Mind Control and Accountability: Uncovering the Truth of the CIA’s MKULTRA Project.” The hearing revisited one of the Cold War’s most controversial intelligence programs while examining whether decades of document destruction and government secrecy have prevented a full accounting of what happened.
Witnesses included Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at Brown University and author of Poisoner in Chief; investigative journalist Tom O'Neill, author of Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties; and Dr. Elizabeth Ginexi, a former National Institutes of Health official who appeared as the minority witness. https://www.military.com/congress-reopens-the-cia-mkultra-files-as-witnesses-call-for-answers
The CIA's 'Heart Attack Gun': A Cold War Weapon for Targeted Assassinations ….But if the agency was going to kill world leaders, it couldn't look like an assassination, of course. The CIA needed the perfect weapon, and it found one in shellfish. Once extracted, the potent neurotoxin could be frozen and fired from a pistol, killing its victim with what appeared to be a heart attack. In a 1975 public hearing, Sen. Church showed the CIA's "heart attack gun" to the world. https://www.military.com/history/cias-heart-attack-gun-cold-war-weapon-targeted-assassinations.html
Hektoen International A Journal of Medical Humanities Louis Jolyon West, M.D.: A dangerous doctor Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” The Nuremburg Code, Section on Permissible Human Experiments (1946) …. Some of West’s research on mind control was done as part of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Project MKUltra, from 1953–1973. Illegal human experimentation was done to develop procedures and drugs to weaken people and force confessions through psychological torture and brainwashing. These experiments were carried out at over eighty institutions, including military bases, schools, universities, hospitals, and prisons. Special brothels were established where customers were secretly dosed with psychoactive substances. The drugs tested included LSD, amphetamines, mescaline, psilocybin, and scopolamine. The drugs were combined, in institutional settings, with electroconvulsive (“shock”) treatments, hypnosis, isolation, and sensory deprivation. Several people died or were permanently damaged. https://hekint.org/2024/01/25/louis-jolyon-west-m-d-a-dangerous-doctor/
Documents Reveal Just How Crazy The CIA’s MKULTRA Mind-Control Program Really Was A new collection of over 1,200 documents detailing the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) infamous mind control program, MKULTRA, was published by the National Security Archive and ProQuest on Monday. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/2025-01/2024-12-26_daylycaller.com-documents_reveal_just_how_crazy_the_cias_mkultra_mind-control_program_really_was.pdf
Digital National Security Archive (DNSA): CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MKULTRA This collection explores the Central Intelligence Agency’s foray into behavioral and mind control experiments in the 1950s and 1960s. Most commonly known as Project MKULTRA, which refers to the research carried out by the CIA and affiliated institutions between 1953-1963, this codename came to be used as an umbrella term for an array of scientific, psychological, and military endeavors that began well before the official start of MKULTRA in 1953 and that continued in the years after the project officially ended. In this collection, researchers will find many documents relating to MKULTRA as well as its predecessors, Project BLUEBIRD and Project ARTICHOKE, and its various sister projects and successors, including MKNAOMI, MKDELTA and MKSEARCH. This collection also contains records relating to investigations into the CIA’s mind control program, both by the Agency itself and Congress, during the mid to late 1970s. The set has been carefully curated to highlight the clearest, most substantive documents available on MKULTRA and to focus on those records that provide insight into the scope and purpose of the Agency’s mind control program. https://proquest.libguides.com/dnsa/64
Memorandum for Director of Central Intelligence, “Project MKULTRA, Subproject 35,” Top Secret, November 15, 1954, 13 pp. …. The CIA’s Technical Services Staff (TSS) requests authorization for a project at Georgetown University Hospital that would provide cover for research under the Agency’s “biological and chemical warfare program.” Using a philanthropic organization as a “cut-out,” the CIA would partially fund “a new research wing” of the hospital (the Gorman Annex) and would use one sixth of the new annex to conduct “Agency-sponsored research in these sensitive fields.” MKULTRA, the memo observes, provides research and development funding “for highly sensitive projects in certain fields, including covert biological, chemical and radiological warfare” but does not specifically authorize funds to establish cover for these programs. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/32726-document-11-memorandum-director-central-intelligence-project-mkultra-subproject-35
Memorandum for Director of Central Intelligence, “Successful Application of Narco-Hypnotic Interrogation (ARTICHOKE),” Classification unknown, 3 pp. Jul 14, 1952 …. In a memo to the DCI, the CIA Security Office reports on the “successful” use of ARTICHOKE interrogation methods on “Russian agents suspected of being doubled.” Using the cover of a “psychiatric-medical” evaluation, officials from the Security Office and the CIA Medical Office combined the use of “narcosis” and “hypnosis” to induce regression and, in one case, “a subsequent total amnesia produced by post-hypnotic suggestion.” In the second case, CIA handlers used “heavy dosages of sodium pentothal,” a barbiturate, “coupled with the stimulant Desoxyn,” a methamphetamine, “with outstanding success.” The officers involved believed “that the ARTICHOKE operations were entirely successful” and “that the tests demonstrated conclusively the effectiveness of the combined chemical-hypnotic technique in such cases.” https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/32721-document-06-memorandum-director-central-intelligence-successful-application-narco
John S. Earman, Inspector General, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Memorandum for the Record, “MKULTRA Program,” Secret, November 29, 1963, 2 pp. Nov 29, 1963 …. This memo records a meeting held in the office of Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Gen. Marshall Carter to settle the one major point of disagreement among CIA officials over the inspector general’s MKULTRA recommendations: whether to continue with the testing of MKULTRA substances on unwitting U.S. citizens. Others present were Deputy Director for Plans Richard Helms, CIA executive director (and former inspector general) Lyman Kirkpatrick, current CIA inspector general John Earman, and Sidney Gottlieb, head of the CIA’s Technical Services Division (TSD). https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/32732-document-17-john-s-earman-inspector-general-us-central-intelligence-agency
PROJECT MK ULTRA, THE CIA'S PROGRAM OF RESEARCH INBEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION JOINT HEARING BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON HEALTH AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH OF THE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES UNITED STATES SENATE NINETY-FIFTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION August 3, 1977 https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/sites-default-files-hearings-95mkultra.pdf
January 2015 An Analysis of CIA and Military Testing of LSD on Non-Consenting U.S. Service Members and Recovery Through the VA Disability B.M. Disbennett (Disbennett, B.M. (2015) "An Analysis of CIA and Military Testing of LSD on Non-Consenting U.S. Service Members and Recovery Through the VA Disability System,"Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice: Vol. 3: Iss. 2, Article 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.70658/2693-3225.1058 Available at: https://ir.law.utk.edu/rgsj/vol3/iss2/4 ....This paper will explore the top-secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) human medical experiment, MKULTRA, and the possible avenues of relief for service members involved in the project....This article will take a brief look into the history of human medical trials, followed by a history of the CIA program MKULTRA, and other related programs. https://ir.law.utk.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1058&context=rgsj
The Lunchbox Theory: Lessons Learned from Trauma and Abuse, book by Michael Skinner The Lunchbox Theory is a deeply personal memoir about the lifelong consequences of childhood abuse, including sexual trafficking - and the hard-won possibility of healing. With honesty and compassion, Michael Skinner traces his path from a successful musician, agent, and father to a man forced to confront truths he had buried for years. The story ultimately points toward resilience: reclaiming joy, rebuilding a life, and choosing hope.
For more than two decades, Skinner has advocated for survivors of childhood trauma. Today he brings that experience to his work as an award-winning speaker—and as a musician again, using story and song to help others feel seen and less alone.
https://www.mskinnermusic.com/ https://www.casemateipm.com/9781963714098/the-lunchbox-theory/
