Project Monarch: The Tangled
Web Since 1991, Mark Phillips and Cathy O'Brien have
alternately appalled and enthralled their growing audience with tales
of mind control, programmed prostitution, ritual abuse, and worse. The
handsome couple from Tennessee initially told their story to a select
group of writers and journalists. Now, they spread the word via
right-wing periodicals and outside-the-mainstream radio programs.
They've also written a book: Trance-formation of America.
Cathy claims to be a victim of the Monarch Project, an
insidious CIA/military/Satanist plan to use ritual abuse
victims as mind-controlled guinea pigs. Victims of the plot, almost
always female, grew up within multi-generational Satanic families.
Sold by their parents to government brainwashers, Monarch kids are
intentionally "split" into directed multiple personalities, useful for
various criminal purposes - as spies, as drug mules, as prostitutes,
and so forth. The well-developed primary personality never realizes
what was done by, or to, the
alter personalities. Powerful individuals with a taste for sexual
excess choose their playmates from the ranks of Monarch graduates, the
better to avoid after-the-fact blackmailers and tattle-talers, a la
Vicki Morgan and (if you believe certain writers) Marilyn Monroe. For
example, O'Brien describes in detail how one important aide to Ronald
Reagan enjoyed raping her anally while using a stun device to prod her
body with electric convulsions. This is the sort of fetish that might
cause some concern among the voters, if ever they learned the truth.
Hence, Monarch.
Little about the basic Monarch theory struck me as
technically implausible - indeed, this putative project seems, in many
ways, the logical extension of MKULTRA. I therefore initially found
the O'Brien/Phillips story quite intriguing. But I also found Mark and
Cathy exceptionally frustrating to deal with.
Mark Phillips has offered varying descriptions of how he
first learned about Monarch programming. At one point, he
said he had worked for an unnamed "DIA contractor," in which position
he came across various materials detailing the government's mind
control projects. But in a letter to me (June 1, 1991), he claimed to
have discovered the operation during his "tenure in the '60s and '70s
at NASA (Huntsville, Alabama) and Woodland Hills R&D (Woodland Hills,
California)" I have lived near Woodland Hills most of my life, yet
have never heard of any such corporation, which remains a mystery to
everyone else I have consulted. (A call to Directory Assistance came
up goose eggs.)
Phillips seems rather too young to have worked in a sensitive position
at NASA in the 1960s. He supposedly "retained" copies of classified
documents detailing "harmonics, electroshock, hypnotic programming,
mind/body conditioning (torture), (limited) drug applications for
programming and deprogramming, and the names and
backgrounds of the expendables (victims)." Peculiarly, he has never
produced any of this confirming documentation. Nor has he produced any
evidence that he ever worked for any government contractor.
Independent background checks have revealed only that he has held far
less impressive jobs, such as selling recreational vehicles.
He also briefly joined forces with a Tennessee
businessman named Alex Houston. Houston, in a telephone interview with
researcher Mike Knight, claims that he was married to Cathy
O'Brien in 1988. Oddly, she never mentioned this marriage in her
voluminous autobiographical writings, although she has frequently
labeled Houston an operator within Project Monarch - an accusation he
strongly denies. Houston reports that he and Phillips once traveled to
China to sell capacitors, and were briefly detained on suspicion of
espionage by the Chinese government. After returning to the United
States, Houston found that Cathy had gone off with Mark.
Mark Phillips claims that his "inside knowledge" allowed
him immediately to spot Cathy's status as a Monarch victim. He
therefore whisked her away and embarked on a
deprogramming operation - although his description of "how to
deprogram" seems unnervingly similar to descriptions I have read of
how to instill programming. The couple traveled to Alaska, where,
Cathy claims, they gave the FBI testimony concerning various
entertainment figures involved in the Monarch drug conspiracy. In
1991, the couple began distributing "documented proof" of the scheme
to their network of journalists, researchers, and interested parties -
including myself.
Unfortunately, the only "documentation" I ever saw
consisted of unsworn testimony written by Cathy O'Brien, in which she
accused various political and entertainment figures of participation
in the plot. Her two-to-ten page short-stories-from-hell detailed the
horrific deeds (mostly
involving sex and drugs) perpetrated by the likes of Ronald Reagan,
George Bush, and Cathy's bête noir, Senator Robert Byrd. The entire
program, she averred, was commanded by the occultist I have already
labeled "Mr. A." Cathy also identified other putative Monarch victims,
such as Country singer Loretta Lynn and Dodger pitcher Fernando
Valenzuala, who, we are told, owed his baseball prowess to hypnosis.
(Apparently the trance wore off.) Even comedian Jack Benny fell afoul
of the Monarch conspiracy.
On one occasion (or so Cathy claims), she was taken to a
rural retreat, where she serviced the eldritch sexual needs
of then-vice president George Bush and one of his chief aides. This
story's high point depicts Bush "kissing the sky" while strung out on
heroin, as he repeatedly gurgles to his comrade: "You look just like
Elmer Fudd!" (A wicked part of me almost wishes it were true)
I once told Mark that found impressive Cathy's
willingness to name names, thereby placing the couple at some legal
risk. Mark became nervous, and, rather less-than-gallantly,
observed that his name didn't appear as author on any of the
accusatory writings, leaving him in a position protected from libel
action.
A number of journalists, such as freelance writer Civia
Tomarkin (who has followed the ritual abuse controversy),
quietly studied the O'Brien/Phillips "paperwork." But, as Tomarkin
observes, "there's a difference between testimony and proof," and Mark
and Cathy refuse to provide the proof they have promised. Cathy has
frequently asserted that her body bears many marks, wounds, and
"cancerous moles" corroborating her tales of torture - yet she never
makes available probative photographs or other medical evidence. Nor
will she provide documentation that she has had cancer. Everyone who
meets her notices that her fashion-model good looks remain unflawed by
any visible scars. Cathy often describes the genitalia of the famous
politicos she has serviced - but no journalist could hope to validate
these
descriptions, unless he possesses a talent for furtive glances in the
Senate restroom.
The couple use familiar tactics to counter their
critics: After Tomarkin's interest turned to skepticism, Mark
Phillips asserted that the journalist was herself part of the Great
Monarch Conspiracy.
It is a very powerful conspiracy, indeed. We are told
that Hollywood animators deliberately place hypnotic cue images into
children's television shows, such as Disney's Duck
Tales. Rock-and-roll Monarchists deliberately include hypnotic cue
words in the lyrics of many popular songs. When asked why they don't
bring civil charges against the Monarchians, Mark and Cathy explain
that the Satanic plot controls the entire court system - just as it
also controls the presidency, much of Congress, the entertainment
industry, and large sectors of both the Mormon and Catholic churches.
The Vatican looms large in the Phillips/O'Brien demonology. In their
1996 book "Trance-formation of America," the couple describe World
Vision as a "Jesuit"
conspiratorial group intent on bringing about a socialistic "New World
Order." (World Vision is actually a conservative Protestant missionary
group. ) Ever since our intrepid anti-Monarch crusaders discovered
that their primary audience leans far to the Right, they have heavily
emphasized the "New World Order" bugaboo and Mark takes pains to hide
his atheism.
I backed away from this story in September of 1991, when
Cathy sent a letter begging me to "rally the troops" in
support of Mark Phillips after a Federal Grand Jury in Tennessee had
called him in for testimony. "We nervously anticipate a set-up," Cathy
wrote, apparently hoping her network would start a "Free Mark"
movement. I didn't bite. Soon thereafter, Mark Phillips explained to
me that the Grand Jury had falsely accused him of threatening
President George Bush. This assertion made no sense: Anyone accused
(even falsely) of posing a presidential threat would first confront
the Secret Service, not a Grand Jury. Later still, I discovered that
the Grand Jury had merely called in Mark Phillips as a potential
witness in a matter unrelated to
either Bush or Monarch. Why, then, the call-to-arms?
Throughout 1991, O'Brien and Phillips inundated their
network with "paperwork" outlining the crimes of numerous
American political figures, especially those hailing from the south.
Yet they never mentioned Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, either in
writing or in telephone interviews. That situation changed after the
1992 Democratic convention, which chose Bill Clinton as the party's
presidential candidate: Cathy then distributed a two-page report
titled "Clinton Coke Lines" - allegedly "compiled 3/89." (Why, then,
didn't we see it earlier?)
In this paper, Cathy claims to have met then-governor
Clinton in 1984, at a contributor's mountain retreat. All parties did
mounds of cocaine while they discussed using a fleet of trucks,
jestingly labeled "Clinton's Coke Lines," to run CIA drugs through
Arkansas. Thus spake Bill, as per O'Brien: "Bottom line is, we've got
control of the drug
industry, therefore we've got control of them (suppliers). You control
the guy underneath ya, and Uncle has ya covered - what have ya got to
lose?" Soon after making this observation, Clinton insisted that Cathy
(apparently brought in to supply "entertainment") had to leave the
room, even though she was a "presidential model" capable of keeping
state secrets.
Cathy O'Brien claims that Arkansas entertainment
director H.B. Gibson was present at this meeting. In 1993,
investigator Mike Knight telephoned Gibson. Knight, no fan of the
president he will always call "Slick Willie," undoubtedly wanted to
prove this story true. But Gibson seemed genuinely bewildered when he
heard the names Alex Houston and Cathy O'Brien. After lengthy,
carefully-phrased questioning, Knight reluctantly decided that Cathy
had witnessed no such meeting involving Bill Clinton.
And that's the bottom line: Mark-and-Cathy stories never
come backed by hard evidence. When Cathy claimed on the
radio that a Vermont Senator had sexually abused her in an L.L. Bean
store located in that state, a caller pointed out that the L.L. Bean
company maintains no stores in Vermont. Cathy rationalized the problem
away. There's always a rationalization.
Just to make matters pluperfectly surreal: Mark Phillips
has privately admitted to at least one researcher that he (Phillips)
concocted the name "Project Monarch," just to see who would pick it
up.
At this point, an honest investigator can only feel
aggravated and dispirited - which may be the entire point of this
charade. In fact, ritual abuse claimants throughout the country had
spoken darkly of a "Project Monarch" well before Mark and Cathy came
on the scene. Now, skeptics can posit that Mark Phillips contaminated
the testimony of others, even though the chronology argues against
this scenario.
As mentioned previously, the essential idea behind the
Monarch theory seems "do-able." And to be fair, Mark and
Cathy never seemed to be "in it for the money" - in fact, they spent a
tremendous amount on their mailings, while the potential for libel
suits placed them at some financial risk. I doubt that sales of their
book (published by a small firm, and undistributed, so far, in the
larger stores) will fetch them much monetary benefit.
How, then, do we assess their claims? Some believe that
Cathy's testimony is essentially true, while others damn it
as a pack of lies. Still others suspect that Mark and Cathy have
played out a clever disinformation gambit, mixing fact and fiction in
order to discredit any genuine victims who "break program." Worth
noting: "Mr. A" has never attempted to sue the couple, even though
they have accused him publicly of numerous crimes, and even though he
is notorious for having his lawyers write intimidating letters to
anyone he perceives as injuring his reputation.
At the end of the day, we can only contemplate
Shakespeare's famous phrase: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave" The
sentiment has never seemed more appropriate.
by Martin Cannon
mcannon@instanet.com
,