![]() Over grainy archival footage, a monotoned narrator explained the shadowy history of CIA programs like the original Phoenix, an assassination and torture initiative that killed as many as 40,000 suspected Viet Cong supporters during the Vietnam War. I set my bags down in an empty room and went back to the cafeteria, where the lights would soon dim for the showing. The venue was a nature education center, a summer camp for kids, but that evening the long hallways, orange carpet, and outdated furniture seemed somehow eerie. ![]() Before I settled in for that night’s program, a screening of a documentary called Monarch: The New Phoenix Program, I headed to the dorms. A woman grew suspicious of my notebook (what’s a better cover story than being a writer, she said) while another thanked me deeply for listening to her story-it wasn’t often that she got to tell it without judgment or dismissal. They were, for the most part, friendly and talkative. It was the main meeting area, and it was warm and cheerful inside: Classic rock played from the sound system, and attendees, mostly in their forties and fifties and mostly white, drank tea and ate brownies under fluorescent lights. I said hello to a few people gathered outside, and then looked for the conference’s organizer in the cafeteria. But I’d never met a TI in person, and walking up to the buildings that first night, I was nervous-I had no idea what to expect. In the weeks leading up to the Hope and Unity Conference, I’d spoken to a few TIs over the phone myself, and I encountered the same certainty and desperation as Graafstra. ![]() But his logical appeals rarely mattered-the people on the other end had already made up their minds. He pointed out logical fallacies in their beliefs, including the technical impossibility of chip implants capable of tracking an individual: A GPS microchip would have the same energy demands and battery problems as a smartphone, and while researchers are experimenting with implants that might help treat neurodegenerative diseases or link prosthetics to neural pathways, even the most advanced technology can’t make someone hear voices or experience a different reality. I tried really hard to engage.” He suggested ways to verify if they really had an implant, like getting an X-ray at the doctor. “I was like, OK, this person is misinformed-it’s a normal intelligent person who maybe has the wrong idea. In the beginning, when he first started hearing from people who believed they’d had chips implanted against their will, Graafstra wrote back to them. Since then, he’s received hundreds more strange emails, from death threats to questions from worried TIs. Shortly after news of his implants was published in March 2005, he got his first piece of hate mail. (Among other things, his implants allow him to unlock his car and operate a smart gun that only he can fire.) But not everyone shares Graafstra’s perspective. To Graafstra, getting the chip implants was a “no brainer,” and he loves to experiment with what they are capable of. “I felt like I was opening up this crack into a whole new universe.” There was “an encyclopedia of information,” she says, a whole new vocabulary to help explain what she’d experienced: gangstalking, brain computer interface, psychotronics. When she was released she found answers to her questions online. When she sought help, a hospital committed her to a 10-day hold in the mental ward, teaching her how to calm her racing heart without addressing the technology that Liza believed was causing it. She knew it had to be some form of technology attacking her-she’d worked in the technology industry for more than a decade. She worked at Microsoft for 10 years and started her own web development company with her partner before the electronic attacks, the stalking, and the surveillance began. Liza is 56, a thin, wiry woman with elf-like ears and bright eyes, an artist who grew up in the Rocky Mountains. The targeting, the rewiring of her brain, is so extreme that she can no longer even cry. She knows that her mind had been pushed to the limits of human endurance (“the most pain you could put on a person before they die”). She is certain that the chips track her every move, that her family has been programmed not to listen to her. When she looks down at her hands, she can see slightly raised bumps where she believes she’s been implanted with microchips. Every morning, Liza wakes up and remembers that she’s been tortured.
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