IP: Experts explain terrorist training

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

I do not know the Akron Journal and their slants so read with  care. I do 
find their points good djf

> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 08:05:54 -0700
> To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
> From: Einar Stefferud <stef () nma com>
>
>
> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 00:17:59 -0700
> Subject: Experts explain terrorist training
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Akron Beacon Journal - Published Wednesday, October 24, 2001
>
> Experts explain terrorist training
>
>      Cult leaders can destroy person's ability to think,
>      creating human bombs
>
> BY THRITY UMRIGAR, Beacon Journal staff writer
>
>
> When Stow businessman Ron Taggart read about a recruiting technique used 
> by al-Qaeda, he felt a jolt of recognition.
>
> The terrorist organization reportedly had asked a potential recruit to 
> stay in a room until someone came for him. The youth waited alone for 
> three days. Finally, a man showed up and told him he had failed his test 
> because he had looked out of a window a few times while he waited.
>
> ``Osama bin Laden is taking thought reform to levels I haven't seen,''
> Taggart said. ``They are sifting for someone who is extremely obedient.''
>
> As someone who belonged to a radical Christian cult for six years in the 
> 1970s, Taggart knows about mind control, thought reform and blind
> allegiance.
>
> ``If you can convince someone they are sacrificing for God and country, 
> they will sacrifice a lot,'' he said. ``That's the key. It's getting them 
> to believe a world view.''
>
> Today, Taggart is the vice president of Cult Information Services of
> Northeast Ohio, a group that works to monitor cults. He helped organize a 
> conference titled ``Cults and Terrorism: Abuse of the Vulnerable,'' being 
> held Friday through Sunday at the Hilton Cleveland South Hotel in
> Independence.
>
> Sponsored by the Connecticut-based Leo J. Ryan Education Foundation, the 
> conference is designed to bring together national experts in the cult 
> awareness field. It will examine such topics as ``Understanding the Making 
> of the Terrorist'' and ``Extreme Belief: How and When does Religion Become 
> Violent?''
>
> Understanding the mind of a terrorist is vitally important for government 
> officials, according to Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, co-authors of the 
> book (BEGIN ITAL.)Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality 
> Change (END ITAL.). The two, who were honored at last year's foundation 
> conference, have been studying cults since the 1970s and have long warned 
> about the possibility of terrorism in America.
>
> "The government must educate our intelligence forces on this mind-set,"
> Siegelman said. "They have almost manically denied that this has been 
> going on for a quarter of the century."
>
> For instance, transfixed by the recent anthrax scare, most Americans do 
> not know that the first bioterrorist attack in America was in 1984, when 
> followers of the Rajneesh cult spread salmonella germs in a town in Oregon.
>
> But how do cult leaders get young men to turn themselves into human bombs?
>
> Conway said thought-stopping techniques, such as extended repetition of
> prayers and chants, literally destroy a person's ability to think.
>
> Siegelman pointed out that letters by Mohamed Atta, who is suspected of
> being the chief hijacker on one of the planes that struck the World Trade 
> Center, show how he worked himself into a trance before stepping onto the 
> plane.
>
> "Saying a prayer a thousand times -- that's just a way of jamming anything 
> human from coming into his brain," he said.
>
> One characteristic of Messianic religions, or cults, is to divide the 
> world into good and evil and to identify the struggle as a cosmic one, 
> said Stephen Kent, a professor of the psychology of religion at the 
> University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
>
> These religions often have a charismatic leader, said Kent, who is 
> speaking at the conference.
>
> ``The common refrain of former cult members is that they would've died for 
> their leader,'' Kent said. ``Suicide for a holy cause is not as mysterious 
> as it first seems.''
>
> Whether accidentally or on purpose, he said, bin Laden has capitalized on 
> the Saudi tradition ``of a spiritual leader going into hiding only to 
> return at the end of time to lead the utopian community.''
>
> Kent said the teachings of any religion can be distorted for political 
> gain. Terrorists ``dip into the mainstream aspects of this tradition, 
> extract an array of ideas on the value of martyrdom and use this to 
> justify violent action.''
>
> Conway and Siegelman said the U.S. government must distinguish between
> terrorist leaders and their rank-and-file followers.
>
> It is also imperative for the United States to resolve basic issues of
> justice and oppression in the Middle East, they added. And moderate Muslim 
> clergy must be used to counteract militant messages being preached to poor 
> and illiterate children in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
>
> But in the meantime, Conway said, people must understand that terrorists 
> are made and not born.
>
> ``The hardest thing to understand,'' she said, ``is that the mind itself 
> can be captured and made into a machine.''
>
> Thrity Umrigar can be reached at 330-996-3174 or at
> tumrigar () thebeaconjournal com
>
> http://www.ohio.com/home/docs_news/006109.htm


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