JOLLY WEST PART II
Before we examine Jolly West’s role in the cover up of the conspiracy that resulted in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, let’s finish some undone business.
We’ll begin with West’s bold claims to CIA MK Ultra boss Sydney Gottlieb made in his 1956 Studies of Dissociated States and Report on Research In Hypnosis. First, West includes in the former the definition of dissociated states “fugues, amnesias, somnambulisms, and multiple personalities.” We’ll focus on fugues because as you can see it is the precise goal of the MK Ultra program (see The Deep State and Scientology, The CIA vs. L. Ron Hubbard).
Definition of fugue:
“a disturbed state of consciousness in which the one affected seems to perform acts in full awareness but upon recovery cannot recollect the acts performed” – Merriam Webster dictionary
West goes on to state: “In fact, hypnosis may be considered to be a pure-culture, laboratory-controlled dissociative reaction. Of the entire phenomenology of the various states described above, there is not one single manifestation which cannot be produced experimentally in the hypnotic subject.”
(see attached, Studies of Dissociated States)
Further in West’s accompanying “Report on Research in Hypnosis” he reports (on page 7), with no caveats:
“Current experiments indicate that false memories may successfully be inserted and true memories removed in suitable subjects. In other words it has been found to be feasible to take the memory of a definite event in the life of an individual and, through hypnotic suggestion, bring about the subsequent conscious recall to the effect that this event never actually took place, but that a different (fictional) event actually did occur.”
(see attached Report on Research in Hypnosis)
You might be wondering “if Jolly West put in writing to the head of CIA Clandestine Operations that the above MK ultra mind control techniques were proven ‘successfully’, where is the evidence of that capability?” That evidence is not in the document where the claim is made. It is not in the papers of Jolly West curated by UCLA. Nor is it with the CIA, unless they have it buried deep beneath the earth behind impenetrable barriers. The CIA to this day refuses to even acknowledge West was their boy, even though documentation of that being the case has been published far and wide.
There must have been something to West’s claim, since as a result of the report, the CIA officially continued to fund West for another ten years (thirty years if you include the CIA fronts that funded subsequent West-led groups, such as American Family Foundation, AFF).
There may be a clue in the one and only event where documentation exists for what Jolly West actually did on this earth between the years 1954 and 1956.
Author Tom O’Neill was the first to discover the documents above and the incident we are about to explore. He covered it in some detail in his classic CHAOS: CHARLES MANSON, the CIA and the SECRET HISTORY OF THE SIXTIES, Little Brown 2019. Mr. O’Neill did not suggest that what follows may have served as West’s “proof” that MK Ultra worked. But, if one takes O’Neill’s extensive research, recounts it in chronological order, investigates and adds new relevant facts, an interesting picture emerges. It might suggest that this case fits the bill as the “proof” West relied upon in making the above sweeping claims of MK Ultra success (at least in the minds of West and Gottlieb, who arranged a least another decade of CIA funding because of West’s accomplishments).
At the time of the incident concerned Jolly West was one year into his independent MK Ultra contractual relationship with the CIA. The event in focus concluded shortly (perhaps as soon as a day) before West announced “mission accomplished” to Gottlieb two years later.
State of Texas vs. Jimmy Shaver
It was the bizarre matter of Jimmy Shaver. Very little was known about Shaver’s previous history other than he’d been divorced, had re-married, and had two kids. He was an airman at West’s Lackland Airforce base in San Antonio Texas. He was an instructor for dozens of men. He had no criminal record, no history of violence and was never considered mentally ill. He was, however, recommended for experimental treatment for migraine headaches at Lackland’ medical facility where the likes of West were experimenting. He fit two of Jolly West’s criterion for human guinea pig status: “airmen” and “patients” (see paragraph E “Subjects” of the attached page 3 of West’s June 11, 1953 proposal letter to MK Ultra Head Sidney Gottlieb.
On the night (early morning hours) of July 4, 1954 a three-year old girl was found raped and brutally murdered in a gravel pit near a tavern in San Antonio. According to the El Paso Herald-Post, the pit was located “just outside the wire fence of the Lackland Air Force Base.” (close to Jolyon West’s office and lab at the base). Shortly afterward Shaver emerged from the brush near the pit, sweating, breathing heavily, with scratches across his upper body. He was arrested. Witnesses said Shaver seemed “trancelike” and he asked “what is going on here?” as if he were genuinely in the dark. There was no indication Shaver had made any attempt to escape. Instead, he was wandering around in an apparent daze. He claimed to have no knowledge about the crime.
Through hours of interrogation at the local jail, Shaver maintained his innocence. Finally, mid-morning in apparent resignation he signed a confession. It only lasted for a few hours. In the afternoon, Shaver signed another confession that cancelled the first. In relevant part it stated, “If she was raped and she is dead then I must be responsible since I was the one who picked her up and put her in my car.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram 30 Sept 1954). Quite the subjunctive case for ‘proof’ beyond a reasonable doubt. Significantly, O’Neill learned from a West associate that West had somehow inserted himself into the situation the very night of the murder, though the extent of his involvement was never disclosed.
Four days after the questionable confession Shaver told a reporter for the Austin American, “I guess I’m guilty, but I just can’t see me doing something like that…I’ve always been a religious man. I’ve always tried to be good. I don’t know what happened.” Again, he asserted that he remembered nothing about the murder. (Austin American article)
Shaver’s court-appointed attorneys moved the court to have Shaver declared insane and incapable of standing trial. The motion was tried before a jury. At first it seemed that Shaver’ motion would succeed. After all, according to the 22 Sept 1954 edition of the Brownsville Herald, “Three Air Force psychiatrists testified Shaver was insane at the time of the crime and is insane now.”
But, the jury ruled Shaver was capable of standing trial. The Brownsville Herald reported on 24 Sept 1954 that when the jury read the verdict, Shaver’s mother Mrs. E. McGhee immediately had a heart attack and collapsed to the courtroom floor. (Brownsville Herald, attached)
With three military psychiatrists attesting to Shaver’s insanity, he still had a fighting chance in trial and on appeal.
Enter the Black Sorcerer’s apprentice, Dr. Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West. West took it upon himself all at once to a) become Jimmy’s doctor and treat him, b) forward his MK Ultra experimentation by plying Jimmy with drugs and hypnotism, and c) serve as the critical link on the defense team, the lead psychiatric expert witness in trial. A conflict of interest ridden mix that only an accomplished sociopath could orchestrate.
West testified how through use of sodium amytal and hypnosis he had put Shaver into a hypnotic state. It was only in that artificially induced trance state that Shaver admitted to the crime. Realize, Shaver since the day after his possibly coerced, and subjunctive-laced confession never relented from the position that he had no recollection of the crime and was flummoxed by what had happened (until the day he died). Only his own psychiatrist, putatively testifying on his behalf, presented the evidence of admitted guilt required to send him to the electric chair. According to O’Neill who reviewed the original trial transcripts, “West argued that Shaver’s truth-serum confession was more valid than any other.” To add additional grounds for sentencing his patient/client to death, West testified that Jimmy Shaver though temporarily insane when he allegedly did the dirty deed, was now “sane.”
In one go West managed to violate the Nuremburg Code against human experimentation, violate the Hippocratic Oath by harming his own patient (in fact having him sentenced to the death), violate doctor patient-privilege, and probably violate attorney work-product privilege.
Any other medical professional who pulled such a stunt would promptly lose his license for life. He’d probably also be sued so royally as to have his wages garnished for the rest of his life to pay the judgement. Not so for favored and valued CIA contractors. They, like West, wind up living privileged and honorific-filled lives in exchange for such skullduggery.
Tom O’Neill hunted down transcripts of West’s drug/hypnosis confession session. The passages he provided in CHAOS demonstrate West leading and encouraging Shaver to the point of possibly implanting the confession in Shaver’s head. Initially Shaver resisted.
Example:
West: “After you took her clothes off what did you do?”
Shaver: “I never did take her clothes off.”
The critical middle 1/3rd of the interview was not recorded – the period in which apparently Shaver’s resistance was worn down. The final segment begins with this narration: “Shaver is crying. He’s been confronted with all the facts repeatedly.” That Shaver caved to West’s suggested confession while under hypnosis and sodium amytal and repeated leading questions is no surprise today. That is because it is accepted science that both hypnosis and sodium amytal create extreme suggestibility, particularly when combined. But, further research found that Jolly West already knew that fact and worse about combining hypnosis with sodium amytal. Eight years earlier he wrote the following in his April 1948 paper “Hypnosis In psychotherapy”: “[Hersley] investigated nebutal, sodium amytal, and sodium pentothal, and believes the barbiturates act specifically on the hypothalamic region…he was able to establish good hypnotic rapport with 18 of 20 nurses, and produce hypnotic phenomena (catalepsy, hallucinations, hyperamnesia, etc.) in many.” He must have remembered. After all, his first MK Ultra mentor Dr. William Donald Hastings of University of Minnesota sent this little note to his prize student in response that very paper:
But West concealed that fact from the court, instead passing off his implanted confession as “more valid than any other.” As the MK Ultra documents we’ve reviewed demonstrate West and his CIA bosses were never after the truth, but instead were intent on creating false memories, fugue states, and amnesia.
Did West program Shaver from the get-go to commit murder and forget it? Was Shaver an MK Ultra experiment gone wrong that required implanting a confession to discredit and silence him? Did West simply bumble in and destroy Shaver’s defenses out of his signature brand of vanity mixed with incompetence? We apparently can never know.
Leaving no stone unturned, O’Neill investigated the “experimental treatments” that Shaver apparently received at the Lackland Air Force base medical facility. He requested the medical records for Jimmy Shaver. He was informed by Lackland that all medical records for 1954 were intact with one exception: those for last names beginning between “Sa” and St” went missing.
Whether programming a killer or implanting a confession, both would be employing the very means and ends West vowed in writing to his CIA boss Sydney Gottlieb to perform the year before. (see, Jolly West Part One)
Predictably, Shaver was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair. Twice. He appealed the first verdict/sentence on a juror bias claim, won that appeal and was tried a second time. The day he was sentenced a second time to the electric chair sealed his fate forever. March 31, 1956.
According to O’Neill’s best estimate, West’s triumphant “mission accomplished” claim (made in the undated documents referenced above) to Gottlieb was rendered in or about “April 1956.”
I am not claiming that West waited until the very month, perhaps even the very day, for Shaver’s fate to be sealed (dead men can’t tell tales) before claiming success at MK Ultra goals. But, looking at the sequence of things, one could come away with that impression.
While awaiting his fate on death row, Shaver was asked by an Associated Press reporter if he remembered anything on the night the little girl was killed. He said, “I just can’t recall a thing except that I remember riding in the back seat of the car.” He seemed at ease, adding “I think it’s better for me to die for something that I didn’t do than to die for something I did. I don’t have blood on my hands and I praise God for that.” (Associated Press, published in Corpus Christi Caller Times)
Jimmy Shaver, of conscious mind (not in West’s drug and hypnosis induced trance state), insisted upon his innocence until his death by electrocution.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 
