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Could There Be A Real ‘Manchurian Candidate’? TV Show To Test Whether Innocent People Can Be Turned Into Brainwashed Assassins
- Bobby Kennedy’s assassin claimed he was hypnotised to carry out killing
- CIA investigated mind control between Fifties and Seventies as part of covert project known as MKUltra
By Damien Gayle
PUBLISHED:08:36 EST, 26 October 2012| UPDATED:08:59 EST, 26 October 2012
A television programme is out to test whether innocent people can be brainwashed in becoming unwitting assassins as in the plot of political thriller The Manchurian Candidate.
In the 1959 novel, a man is brainwashed into becoming an unwitting sleeper assassin as part of a Communist conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government.
The novel and its film adaptations have intrigued many, and related conspiracy theories have long-held that the U.S. government and others have tried to develop techniques to control the minds of individuals.
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Programmed to kill: Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey in a scene from the 1962 cinema adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate, in which a man is brainwashed into becoming an assassin as part of a communist plot
In one famous case, the assassin who killed presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy, Christian Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan, later claimed he was hypnotised into carrying out the killing.
Likewise, Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress kidnapped by the left-wing revolutionary group the Symbionese Liberation Army, claim the gang brainwashed her into taking part in a bank robbery.
There have been government-sponsored studies into the possibility of mind control.
Between the Fifties and Seventies, the CIA conducted controversial experiments to develop behavioural engineering that many believed aimed at brainwashing subjects.
