< BACK   A BUG IN YOUR BRAIN By Robert Irving   The subject of mind-control also held a special place with Azadehdel. Writing as Armen Victorian in the now-defunct Undercover magazine, he detailed MKULTRA/DELTA: a CIA-sponsored mind-control project which included brain-implanted, micro-miniaturised radio-controlled electronic devices, or stimoceivers, inside the brains of unsuspecting recipients. "In the course of my research", he wrote, "I have met people with similar electronic implants in their heads".     It is likely he was referring to `Cassava N'Tumba`, a Kenyan journalist and sometime Plumstead resident who, one day in 1992 walked in to the Woolwich surgery of Labour MP John Austin-Walker complaining of severe headaches, allegedly aggravated by harassment, abduction, and cruel medical experimentation by Britain's Security Services.   Austin-Walker's secretary, Angie Hill, remembers him well; "He'd had a lot of problems...", she told me; "His file is very thick... he'd been in and out of mental hospitals, and was quite ill". N'Tumba - or someone posing as N'Tumba, perhaps - told Austin-Walker that during one visit to hospital he'd been unwillingly anaesthetised and fitted with two electronic devices - a 'transmitter' high in his left nostril, and an 'electrode of radio-transmitting crystal' in the occipital lobe at the base of his skull. And what's more, N'Tumba claimed he could supply the X-rays to prove it. He showed them to Lennart Lindqvist, the International Secretary of the `International Network Against Mind Control`, operated from a post-box in Stockholm, Sweden. Consultation with the Network's medical experts apparently confirmed the claim. In his accompanying letter, N'Tumba was indignant; "Concerning the brain transmitters in my head", he wrote, "...it has been performed without my knowledge of consent". N'Tumba had noticed that, since the operation, he had been sharing all his, "...visions, thoughts, images, hearing, and memory... etc, with people around me as the security services are engaging in a large scale propaganda drive to smear my character, background, behaviour, emotions and motives." "I have no privacy at all", he complained; "...I am not a spy, I am not a criminal, I am not a terrorist. (I am) an innocent victim of MI5".   Austin-Walker dutifully forwarded his constituent's complaints to Prime Minister John Major. According to a Downing St spokesman, the letter was passed to the Home Office. Their reply, when it eventually came, was characteristically ambiguous: "The British Intelligence Services can neither confirm nor deny any allegations made against the British Intelligence Services". A second letter to the Prime Minister representing N'Tumba's case soon followed - this time from Lennart Lindqvist. Simultaneously faxed to news agencies world-wide, it detailed the politics and medical intricacies behind the apparently growing problem of cranial implantation. The letter cited Article 5 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Nor shall anyone without their approval be utilised for medical or scientific experiments". Lindqvist then moved swiftly on to the sensitive issue of remuneration. With a mind, perhaps, to the recent $1 million settlement on behalf of the CIA and Canadian government to victims of the MKULTRA programme of mind-control experiments, he told the Prime Minister: "We urgently press you for all possible assistance which you can give to Mr N'Tumba."   At some point Henry added 'Cassava N'Tumba' to his list of pseudonyms. However, despite a host of circumstantial evidence - for example, Henry played tapes of 'N'Tumba's' phone conversations at the Leeds UFO conference; and both Henry and 'N'Tumba' shared a claustrophobic circle of overlapping colleagues and interests - he resisted my suspicions. Once 'N'Tumba' rang me about an article on crop circles I co-wrote for the Independent magazine. In Henry's familiar voice he announced himself as "Er... N'Tumba, Cassava N'Tumba. I am from Kenya. I'm a journalist." Ah! You're Henry Azadehdel, I said. "No, I'm not!" Dr Victorian? "No, I'm not." You sound incredibly like him... is N'Tumba your real name? "Yes it is... and I have records to that effect." I wouldn't expect any less, Henry.   < BACK   ^ TOP