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The CIA Made Me Do It

New Orleans Louisiana - David Mann's life started going downhill soon after he left the army in 1992. A veteran of the Gulf War, David suffered from chronic depression that he thought was brought on by unauthorized experiments he suffered during the attack on Iraq. Experiments, he claimed, that were conducted by the CIA in an attempt to make a select group of men into "super soldiers."

What caused this man to mutilate himself?

Mann was the leading officer of a squad that was part of a larger group of special forces soldiers whose job it was to infiltrate Iraq before the invasion and access enemy troop strength and strongholds in the desert terrain. It was during this exercise that David received special training that neither he nor the other men in his unit had asked for.

In a rambling letter to the New Orleans Times-Herald, Mann stated that after his squad met with a CIA operative named "Red One" they were lead to a cave complex in the Iraq desert where he was subjected to a battery of tests and "mind control devices".

"It was a huge cavern complex," writes Mann in the letter, "deep in the desert and was hidden from view. Red One had a time schedule of all satellite pass overs, American, Russian, everybody's, and wouldn't let us move toward the place until there we were clear of them."

Once in the cavern, Mann and his men were separated and he was taken by himself and interviewed by a "scientist."

"This guy kept asking me questions about how I would solve certain situations." the letter continues. "I would answer and then he would nod his head and write on his pad. It went on for an hour and then he just sorta nodded and finally he picked up the telephone and told whoever was on the other end of it that 'I would do."

Mann then says he was asked to disrobe and then strapped into a machine and had sensors put over different parts of his body.

"I kept asking them what they were doing but they just flashed a form at me that said this was all authorized and was a deep job." (a deep job is special forces slang for a top secret operation) "Finally they put this thing over the top of my head. I could see under the sides of it and some of the other guys were getting the same treatment. A doctor jabbed me with a needle and soon after I passed out."

The next thing that Mann remembered was standing back in the desert with 4 others from his squad. The CIA agent codenamed Red One was with them.

"All the guys were sorta just staring straight ahead, totally out of it. Red One was watching me and when we made eye contact he grinned. He told me that the orders had changed and we four were to go ahead and finish the mission without the others. I said that we didn't have enough supplies or gear and he just sorta shrugged his shoulders. He said 'you'll find out that you're much better now.' The other guys were sorta coming to by this time and I got the feeling that we needed to get going. I saluted the CIA guy. Why I did that I don't know, and he went over a hill.

Picture of David Mann

Tomkins was laying out a map and I looked over it and 15 minutes later we were double timing it to a suspected Republican Guard unit stronghold over 6 miles away. That was the strange thing. None of us talked about what happened at all. We just started doing our job again. I looked at my watch and saw that we had lost a day with the cave stuff and I was upset. Not that they had done stuff to us but that we had lost a day away from doing our work. It was weird."

Mann's squad continued throughout the next week, working as a recon squad for the upcoming desert storm and were finally pulled out on the third day of the invasion.

"It's all just a blur. We did a lot more than recon, we engaged the enemy 5 times and each time it was like we went into overdrive. Every action was straight and perfect by the book. No hesitation. We fought like we were company strength not 5 guys without hope of backup. We liberated food when we could, slept for a couple of hours a night but beyond that it was just a blur of being the perfect soldier. I lost 1 of the guys to a sniper and it didn't faze the rest of us"

Once they were pulled out of action the 4 remaining men were separated and Mann was airlifted to a training base in Saudi Arabia.

"I don't remember much of anything after we left the war. It's just blurry images. My head hurts and my nose starts to bleed if I try to think about it. I know they screwed with us. I can't find any of the other guys, maybe they're dead. They put stuff into me, I've got scars were I never got hurt. The scar on my stomach throbs sometimes and I can hear it ticking at night. It's the tick of the deathwatch inside me. I'm a dead man. I'm a smart bomb to them and that's all. Just another piece of machinery they used and cast aside."

After being discharged from the army in 1992, Mann became increasingly isolated from society and begin roaming the states. For a short time he was in Los Angeles California but it appears he left there sometime in the Fall of 92 and arrived in New Orleans in early 1993. On January 16th of 1993 he checked into Lunt's Hotel, paying for 3 days in advance. On Jan 19th the owner of the hotel, attempting to rouse Mann, broke into the room and found Mann dead on the floor with the words "Cruise Missile" carved into his chest.

The coroner's report states that Mann death was a suicide caused by the ingestion of a massive amount of sleeping pills. The sleeping pills were supplied to Mann by the VA hospital of New Orleans. Mann's letter arrived at the newspaper on the 20th. On the 21st a reporter was sent to the medical examiner's to view the body. It was no longer there and the coroner reported that it had been signed over to the VA hospital so they could conduct their own autopsy.

The Veteran's Administration refused to give the reporter access to the body and spokesperson's declined to be interviewed. A small article about the incident appeared in the newspaper on Feb. 3rd. The CIA declined to comment on the incident as did the army.

sources

-letter from David Mann to the New Orleans Times-Herald

-New Orleans Times Herald article "Another Gulf War Victim?" Feb. 3rd 1993 by Timothy Parson

-phone interview with reporter Timothy Parson on June 15th, 1999

-phone interview with Audrey Mann, aunt of the deceased on June 16th, 1999

-New Orleans coroner report #4612 Mann, David Williams Jan. 20th 1993

photo courtesy New Orleans Coroner's Office



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