Police Chief Dan Oates of the Aurora, Colorado police department maintains that Holmes is not part of any terrorist organization. The Right’s attempts to portray Holmes as a member of the Black Bloc Occupy movement would seem to fall under this denial. As this case continues there seem to be more questions than answers, however.
While speculation is irresponsible, as ABC News discovered when they initially claimed Holmes was a Tea Party member, the seeming refusal of authorities to answer certain questions actually creates the very speculation Chief Oates keeps trying to damp down.
All Americans are seeking to come to some understanding of the reasons for this horrendous tragedy. What is puzzling about James Eagen Holmes is how clean and non existent any record of Holmes is. There are no peers stating that he had proclivities for violence. He has no facebook or twitter accounts or any other social media contacts. His mother stated you have the right person when she found out he had been arrested but has said nothing more about this statement and he has no prior arrest record beyond a parking ticket. By all accounts Holmes is squeaky clean until his mass killing spree Friday night. So how do you explain what happened Friday night?
When it became apparent that the whole Occupy smear wasn’t working, some on the Right began to posit the conspiracy theory that James Eagen Holmes might be involved in some mind control experiment that has gone awry. Unfortunately for those of who don’t usually buy into Right Wing conspiracies we all know of the many and frequent hideous and barbaric experiments our government has conducted on its own citizens over the years. The Tuskeegee syphyllis experiment comes to mind right away.
When I lived in Frederick, Maryland a much more sinister story was out regarding the death of Dr. Frank Olsen, a Ft. Detrick, Maryland biological warfare specialist. The CIA has maintained for years that Olsen committed suicide while the family has always believed Dr. Olsen was killed because of what he knew and also because he asked to resign and get out of whatever he was working on.
The gist of the story is that Dr. Olsen was involved in biological weapons research. He had been assigned as a contact with the CIA’s Technical Sciences staff run by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and his deputy Robert Lashbrook. Lashbrook was also the only person with Dr. Olsen when he either jumped from a 10th floor hotel room or was pushed. At the end Dr. Olsen was involved in experiments with bio-weapons, toxins, and mind control drugs.
Dr. Olsen apparently became an experiment himself on November 18, 1953 while on a retreat with staff to Deep Creek Lake in Western, Maryland. Dr. Gottlied spiked a bottle of Cointreau with something he called serunin but which was really LSD. Dr. Olsen was unaware of the LSD and eventually began to suffer what the CIA termed depression and a nervous breakdown.
He was referred to CIA and program Psychiatrist Harold Abramson in New York, thus the fateful trip and the stay at the Hotel Statler. On the second day the CIA maintains Dr. Olsen threw himself out a 10th story window.
The project Olsen was working on was called MKUltra and was involved in finding a fool proof truth serum in case the Communist Bloc nations were able to actually place a real Manchurian candidate in our highest offices of government. This program used many different forms of behavior control and manipulation. It was undertaken by 80 institutions including 44 colleges and universities.
Knowing that these things took place during the Cold War is one reason why it is not so beyond the realm of possibility with the so called War on Terror to believe that our government isn’t back in the mind control business for interogating suspected terrorists, particularly with how unpopular and illegal waterboarding is not to mention unreliable.
That brings us back to police Chief Oates. How does a neuro-science student get thier hands on para-military gear, 6,000 rounds of ammunition, and explosive devices plus the abilities to construct highly sophisticated booby traps that require the best experts to dismantle. In our Patriot Act era, when the wrong book taken out of your local public library can cause you to be a person of interest, how does a college student buying all these things over the last few months escape everyone’s scrutiny.
Holmes record is so squeaky clean and devoid of any information, here we are two full days past the attack and still no real information about Holmes has come out. Is the whole we are protecting the prosecution of Holmes by not talking about motives for real, or a cover up while everything is cleaned up and a cover story is created to satisfy America?
No one knows for sure and idle speculation is irresponsible. The problem is that the inability and or refusal to give out information fuels the exact speculation that the authorities criticize. With all of the things that have occurred in my lifetime it is not hard in moments like this to not wonder out loud is it a conspiracy?