Image Source: Central Intelligence Agency (76)

“The three individuals named by (redacted) did in fact participate in both the training and support during demonstrations…Of extreme sensitivity in the fact that these same individuals were engaged in other highly sensitive activities which could cause the Agency severe embarrassment if they were surfaced today…”

Image Text: Central Intelligence Agency

The sampling of experiences and highlighted points in history in this book are just grazing the surface of what I witnessed and was forced to be involved in. To write it all would require thousands of pages. I saw more exploitative coercion and callous death in the United States than I ever witnessed anywhere else, possibly because there is more there, or possibly because I was trapped with the offices that do the most harm. Both answers being correct is also a valid possibility.

Because I was still unskilled back then and always available for use, there were occasions on which they quite literally left me to clean it up.

As an example, there was an incident during my freshman or sophomore year of high school, so roughly between 1991 and 1993. The recruiter and her group had brought Middle Eastern men with demolition crew experience into the United States on fake Moroccan passports with marriage green cards, after paying several local women in New Haven and New York City to marry the men to get them into the country. One of the women was the recruiter’s sister, a music teacher I had met in my first days in the U.S. in her tiny Bronx apartment. Another was a cousin with a part-time journalism job who had been living in an apartment in her parents’ multifamily home. They were in their 30s or early 40s at the time. They would both go from having small apartments (rented and rent-free from parents, respectively) to being homeowners of large houses on large lots in preferred neighborhoods. It is highly likely that they received funds for the home purchases from their participation in the scheme.

It was clear that the recruiter selected family members because they were close enough to her to tightly control, and controlling them was necessary. The fake marriages were rocky, obviously, because the men had to live with the women enough to pass Immigration scrutiny. We spent a lot of time in the women’s apartments in those years, talking them through things and coming up with solutions. It was sad, in a way, because the cousin had fallen for the fantasy and was actually upset that her fake marriage wasn’t working out. There were a lot of emotions involved in keeping up the farce.

However, there were worse conflicts between some of the men, and one of them ended up murdered, apparently at the hands of another of the men imported for the planned criminal yet government-funded demolition project. The office at my high school received a call from the recruiter about an “emergency” with instructions directing me to an address near her cousin’s house. I took the city bus and arrived in time to see them working on dragging the body away.

The recruiter’s female cousin was still standing there, visibly shaking and in shock. She nervously talked to me while I ate my sandwich from school in the open kitchen and watched them haul the dead man away. She asked me how I could eat in that situation. I just looked at her. I didn’t have a way to respond. How do you tell someone, whose biggest issues are what to wear and who to fall in love with, that when you’re always surrounded by chaos, you don’t let the chaos dictate your health, your hunger, or your well-being? Or at least you try not to.

Eventually, everyone left and I was handed the keys. Alone in the silence of that small apartment, I cleaned up the blood and tidied up everything else. The entire time, I wondered if I was dropping hair somewhere, if I’d left a fingerprint, and if I had left any trace of myself at all. Honestly, I knew I had. I was never a professional crime scene cleaner. I was thrown into so many insane situations that required a professional, and I just had to try my best. This was no different. For decades I stayed silent, partly because I wondered if I would get blamed for a crime because those were my fingerprints on the cleanup. Looking back at it, I no longer feel the same, not about that murder. I was fourteen or fifteen, a little too young to be masterminding events with men who shouldn’t have even been in the country and who were about to be implicated in something that was much bigger than a young teenage girl with a $5 allowance to buy a sandwich.

I was standing among giants in the intel community, and all I could do was act as if I was okay with it, as if I was somehow magically unaware of what was going on. On more days than I can count, I came within inches of death because of it. On several occasions, it went beyond that line, and I needed to be revived.

And sometimes, I was there for more than the cleanup.

One summer evening, I was standing across the street from the Daily Cafe near Yale, bored and smoking a cigarette by myself. It was something I had done at least a hundred times before. Someone a few years older than me, whom I had met a couple of times before socially, pulled up alongside the curb and started talking to me. He asked if I wanted to drive with him to the nearby parking lot while he parked his car. I got in the car since the parking lot was only a block away. It may have been a little dumb of me. Especially when you consider that we didn’t go to the parking lot.

He kept driving another block or two down Elm Street until we got to a part where the street lights had been broken out. In the darkest section, he stopped the car in the middle of the street. Another car pulled up right alongside us and did the same. He told me to get into the other car, so I piled into it. It was crowded with several people, including a woman I had met once before with George, only a few blocks from the FBI building.

When I met her the first time, George had pulled his car up with her already sitting in it (entirely unexpected, he’d never picked me up from classes), to pick me up on Audubon Street, right as I was walking out from where I was taking jewelry-making and acting courses through the Creative Arts Workshop and a basement dance and theater studio in the building across the street. His picking me up wasn’t so obviously as clandestine of an attempt as I would end up in with her next, but he still seemed nervous and hurried. And, like I said, it was entirely out of character for him. While in the car together, she seemed overly interested in me and asked to see my jewelry while we drove. I showed her a pair of metal earrings that I had made that day. She asked if she could buy them from me.

The next time I saw her, this time in the darkness of the car on Elm Street, one of the first things I would notice about her was the glinting metal of one of those earrings dangling from an ear. I don’t normally fixate on women, notice what they’re wearing, or even talk to them most of the time. After listening to so many females screaming in the prison when I was little, and then being exploited by a woman since the moment I left that prison, it has been rare that I can stand their voices, trust them, or find much in common with them other than the occasional need to know something about clothing sizes and makeup.

But there she was, and something about her stuck in my mind. Sometimes I wonder if I saw something familiar in her. Maybe she was an aunt or a cousin of mine. I spent a lot of life searching for my mother in every face I came across, and in parts of my own reflection, so it wasn’t unusual that I would consider it when looking at her. The only difference was it felt like I might have finally found something.

That’s when the driver took a left off Elm Street and headed into an area with off-campus Yale housing.

We parked and then snuck behind one of the apartment houses and down into its mostly unfurnished basement. It was summer and the majority of students had gone home. The building was vacant except for us. There stood the old man the people in the car had wanted me to meet. He spoke for ages and told me about my family, about aunts and uncles I had never heard the names of before, about how they were doing and what they were up to. He spoke for what must have been at least an hour. I had no idea what he was talking about. I acted polite and listened because he was an old man, but I was sure he was senile and had me confused with someone else. In retrospect, and considering the situation, that first judgment of mine may have been incorrect.

Later that evening I would go upstairs. Most of the people from the car were there, plus a few others. One of them had gotten ahold of my journal after a friend of a friend stole it. He was a conspiracy theory writer in the making at the time (he would become published later) and he was absolutely convinced that I was a “high-level Illuminati mind-controlled slave.” Things got a little weird from there, I’m not going to lie. He told me that I needed to get in the tub there to read the journal because “water breaks the mind control.” I humored him and got in the tub, with my clothes on because I wasn’t quite willing to humor him enough to strip naked and read to an apartment full of people. I can’t remember what part of the journal he was the most interested in. Maybe I need to get in a tub with a notebook and think about it…

By the way, not to spoil the fun, but I wasn’t mind-controlled in quite the way he probably thought. I was primarily silenced by fear, still following the advice of my mother to be a good victim, and also heavily drugged and pliable after running into the recruiter downtown. I’ll get more into the details of that last part later.

I met with him and parts of that group a few more times over the following weeks. He had a manuscript for one of his books that he insisted that I read, in order. It was a dull, long, and dry genealogy of at least twenty-three influential families. I wanted to skip ahead to get to the chapter on the Bush family, but he insisted I start at chapter one. Did I mention that I’m not good with names and that it’s useless to make me read a book that is almost entirely names? I absorbed less than 1% of that reading. It turned out that I would not have the opportunity to make it to the chapter on the Bush family. That chapter also never made it into the published edition.

The next time I went to visit that Park Street building, the recruiter was already there, waiting for me in front of it. Seeing her resulted in a sudden kick of anxiety. She led me inside, telling me that everything I was about to witness was my fault (No, I don’t believe her. It’s more likely this was continuing cleanup from Operation Condor, since the majority of the people in that room were from South America). Inside the lobby, most of the members of the group were lined up against the walls, furthest from the door. There were men who appeared to be SWAT (all dressed in black with rifles that were drawn and pointing at the backs of the heads of three people on their knees in the center of the room). During all of this, the recruiter continued to berate and tell me that their deaths were on my hands. That I was responsible. As the first shot was fired, I turned my head to avoid seeing the result. I still don’t know how many people died. I left the building and never looked back.

I spent the next week attempting to locate the survivors. I didn’t know what I would do when I found them, but I had to try something, and locating them was the first step. I went to the New Haven Police Station, several New Haven Police substations, and the Yale Police Station. No one knew where they were, until the last one. The officer at the desk there told me that the group had been taken by the FBI. When I asked what prison they were brought to, he couldn’t answer. He didn’t know. There was a record of their leaving the prison still in custody, but no record of where they had been brought to.

Years later, that would-be author showed back up, alive, in another part of the country. His books were published but there was something different about them. Instead of the dry academic and thorough writing about more than twenty families, he had brought the number down to thirteen families and the pages were full of ranting religious rhetoric. I think they tortured him until they broke his mind and he reverted to religious belief and to a manic level. His father was a minister, so it makes sense that’s the safe place his mind would go during torture. Mine focuses on the pain and turns it inside out into something else, but I’m another story entirely.

The point is, they broke that man. Is basic information really so dangerous that we need to destroy people to protect them from it? Seriously. How many people need to be protected from what is already common knowledge - that rich people with resources exist, that they have families just like the rest of us, and that some of them influence the industries and countries they own and live in? And the concept that some, or even a large percent, of the population might be manipulated and duped - is that really a state secret? Is it worth destroying lives over?

I found an online live chat he was in years later and quietly listened in, afraid to say anything that might spook him. He spoke about an execution and still sounded shaken up by it. There’s little doubt in my mind about what execution he was referring to.

Entrenchment at Yale

Back on the ground in New Haven (and sometimes Hartford, Washington D.C., and other primarily East Coast locations), there was much more going on. Directly in front of my eyes, politicians were leashed and business owners were harassed. In my presence, and often with my assistance, healthy children and cancer patients were manipulated into becoming Department of Defense test subjects for various projects "for their benefit" and almost inevitably resulting in their injury or death.

It always shocked me how easily the parents of children fell for the fraud. All it took was promising their children "opportunity," the magic word of America that works just as well domestically as it does internationally. I will never shake off the memory of the deceased body of one of those children. She was a beautiful blonde child and a good friend to me for the short time that I knew her. I witnessed her snuffed out by scientists before her time in a room accessed from the halls beneath Yale New Haven Hospital.

I will always mourn her, even though I feel alone in my grief, as if she has been long forgotten by everyone else. The recruiter would have me guide children from medical lab to medical lab throughout the day to various research projects and then several blocks away to a local community center to be picked up by their parents from “camp.” These were generally the low-income children the recruiter had conned the parents of to give her medical guardianship. At the end of one day, I had already collected a Jamaican girl who was roughly my age and we walked down the hall to find the blonde girl to walk with us to the “camp” parent pickup area. The room door was on our right as we walked down that hall. We entered and there was that girl, on the floor, dead, in front of a small therapeutic pool. Other than her, the room was empty of people. They had just left her body there alone. The two of us responded quite like you’d assume girls would, shrieking and freaking out as if we had just seen the biggest spider ever.

Researchers heard our screams and came running. They gave the girl I was with a small cup of drugs to calm her down or help her forget (I’d assume more the latter), and the day went on from there. That evening, they crowded most of the parents into a room in the back of the Jewish Community Center, a building they had used as a camp front for the research. They told the parents it had been a tragic accident that had happened while the children were having swimming lessons in a large pool in that community center, blocks away from the small room where that child had died alone, other than the presence of researchers. The parents accepted the explanation, although many reasonably pulled their children from the projects after that night.

When the deceased girl’s mother entered the room, I tried to say something. I was never great with emotional things. I had buried my own feelings so deep to survive those years that I didn’t know how to express my regret, empathy, and pain. As I was trying to find the words, the recruiter swept in between us, guided the woman into a dark room, and drugged her. Within about five minutes, that mother walked out of the dark room, having easily accepted the lie that her daughter’s end of life was an innocent death, a swimming accident. She actually seemed to be unnaturally at peace with it. Maybe that response was the drugs, but my heart sank when I saw it.

Prior to that moment, I thought that a child's death would be enough to wake people from their slumber if nothing else was. I was proven wrong.

As for that Jewish Community Center, according to the Ethnic Heritage Center and New Haven Independent, the building had already been sold or was in the transitory hand-off period by that time (the sale was initiated in 1985 and final closing ceremonies were in the early summer of 1986). I did not first meet the Jamaican child, who witnessed the body with me, until the summer of 1986. Meaning, that particular “camp” was either during the end of the transitory period or was falsely running in the name of the established community center, using their prior reputation, even though the people who had established that reputation had handed over the keys, left the sign in place above the door, and had already relocated to another area.

Actually, the history of a Catholic school I went to was much the same - people taking advantage of a reputation established by a prior administration, but I digress…

Take the blindfold off and walk away from the ledge.

Pushing people over it won’t save you.

They’re tied to you.

(And yes, I know this advice is difficult to follow.

There are days I can see the benefit

to pushing all of Argentina off a cliff, myself.)

Image Source: New Haven Independent (68)

“New Haven’s Jewish Community Center was downtown on Chapel Street in those days...It no longer is in that Chapel Street building. (Yale’s art school is.)

In August of 1985, the JCC decided to lease and renovate a fitness facility on South Bradley Road in Woodbridge...The sale of the Chapel Street (New Haven) building was finalized that December…

The Chapel Street era officially ended on Saturday, June 21, 1986, with a commemorative party.”

Text Source: New Haven Independent

Image: Chapel Street Jewish Community Center Building (69)

Image Source: The Ethnic Heritage Center

They did have a camp there, or at least activities, and we attended once in a while to make the farce seem legit. It was sitting in a gymnasium room in that Jewish Community Center where I once played the parachute game with other children. We would sit in a circle and loft a large and colorful parachute into the air between us. Then, we would run under it, the chaos of our movement hidden under the material as it fell back to the ground. Beneath that parachute, we would seek a way out and find a new place to sit. Once everything was over, every spot to sit was taken, but no child remained in their original place. That is how I see war, especially as a child of it. In the chaos of war, so many of us change positions, that within a few rounds, no one knows what side they are on, what side they started on, or who their enemy is. Have a few generations play that game under a policy of secrecy and deception, and the chaos becomes complete.

At least when the recruiter preyed on adult cancer patients, rather than healthy children, you knew she was probably ending their painful struggle by bringing them to the mercy of death more quickly. Although, her recruitment tactics were still highly unethical (and so was giving patients false hope when the only intention was to use them for the benefit of weapons research).

To target some of the cancer patients, she would bring me along for trips on the New Haven to New York Amtrak train and she would carry along a small and relatively discreet handheld Geiger counter for radiation monitoring. She’d wander through the train cars until she located someone who had radiation treatment recently enough that they could cause the Geiger counter to silently alert.

Then she would tuck away the Geiger counter and sit next to them as if she were simply a fellow passenger in need of a seat. She would strike up a friendly conversation, which she would quickly steer in the direction of health until they spoke about their cancer treatment. From there, she would exclaim, “Oh, what an amazing coincidence!” The recruiter would go on to tell them that she worked for Yale New Haven Hospital, that she was a cancer researcher there, and that she just happened to know of an excellent research program that had one remaining available space.

As far as I know, every single one of those conned cancer patients died.

And her little, “I’m a cancer researcher” spiel she would tell so many of her marks? Technically, maybe she was early in her career. Those were some of the labs and projects she would end up supervising as time went on. However, the research projects I saw her sign off on covered a somewhat wider variety, and not just nuclear and biological.

When it came to what she told others, her credentials and title seemed to change to match whomever or whatever her mark was. She once told the public and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in official documents intended to be used in court, that she had a background in Environmental Sciences.

Image Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (70)

“Mary Ellen Marucci holds an AA degree in Environmental Science, was employed as a technician for United Aircraft Research Laboratories… a cost estimator and expeditor for metal fabrication firms, an engineering assistant for the City of New Haven, CT…. She serves as chief executive officer (Coordinator) of CCMN, Inc.”

Text Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission

It would switch over to nuclear engineering or nuclear medicine when speaking with antinuclear organizations or potential research subjects.

Image Source: 2013 Screenshot Facebook (71)

“When I worked at Yale’s School of Medicine, in cancer research within the radiation therapy department.”

Text Source: 2013 Screenshot Facebook

Image Source: Google Profiles 2013 Screenshot (72)

“MHD Engineering aide, Yale Medical Library…Yale School of Medicine - Cancer Research…Yale…Nursing School…”

Text Source: Google Profiles 2013 Screenshot

I was growing up in a situation entirely devoid of ethics and in which children were not protected, although we were often there to make a dangerous situation appear normal and safe. Illusion is not the same as reality.

We were never safe.

And neither was anyone else.

Shortly after our arrival in New Haven, the recruiter started bringing me along to “Yale movie nights.” They seemed innocent enough, especially if you bring a child along to highlight that appearance of the safe and innocent. The York Square Cinema was a small theater located on the edge of campus back then. On one weekday per week, the recruiter’s group would rent out the entire theater, barring anyone else from using it, lock the doors, and only permit Yale students who had responded to a flyer to enter. The flyers, posted all over campus, had promised a series of radical movies. The movies highlighted concepts like apartheid, the struggle of grassroots organizations to fight against corporations to stop the poisoning of towns by waste runoff, guerrilla warfare, and other topics of interest to young anti-authoritarian or cognizant students.

We would pile everyone in and start the movie. The theater refreshment stand was closed (although as a child brought along by the representative of the organization renting the space, I would still manage to sneak a bag of Twizzlers before everyone arrived). “Luckily,” the people running the series brought refreshments for everyone and would have a drink dispenser and a bowl of snacks available on a table they set up in the back of the movie theater room we would be occupying for the evening. It was spiked - most likely with whatever expert scopolamine derivative was coming out of the Yale chemistry lab at the time (I’ll go more into that later), i.e., a strong hypnotic.

Then, we would watch the movie. And the three or four of them who were there in an official capacity, the organizers and workers, would watch the Yale students to see what their reactions were throughout the movie. Then, they would decide which ones to target. It was the same routine every time. They’d slide up into the seat next to the ideal ones, strike up a conversation, and lead them off before the end of the night. I have no idea what happened to the students from there. They were Yalies, so I can reasonably assume they didn’t go entirely missing or end up sold into cancer research. But I do know they left in a highly drugged state, with the type of people who do not do nonexploitative, ethical, or un-blackmail-tinged recruitment. What the recruiter had been doing at the university in Buenos Aires was the same exact thing she was doing in New Haven, just with a little more tact since we weren’t in the middle of state terrorism in Connecticut.

Did you really think a tiger, or a government, changes its stripes just because it’s in its own neighborhood? That’s where the tiger gets more confident.

It owns the place.

Later, beliefs-based recruitment would come more frequently from the shanty town, where George Edwards was ever-present. That shanty stood in the plaza between Woolsey Hall and Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library for about two years.

Image: Shanty on Yale Campus (73)

Image Source: Yale Alumni Magazine

Image Source: New Haven Independent (74)

“He was mostly known as an omnipresence on New Haven streets, in settings formal and informal, with stories to tell and points to make. When activists built a shantytown to push Yale to divest from apartheid South Africa, Edwards was there to help build the structures.”