CAPITAL REGION;
Implant researcher goes on paid leave
ANDREW BROWNSTEIN Staff writer

11/12/1999
Times Union Albany, NY
THREE STAR
Page B1
(Copyright 1999)

Albany UAlbany mum on why professor, whose study of mind control was shut down last spring, has left. A University at Albany professor whose research on government mind control was shut down last spring is now on paid leave, university officials said Thursday.

But citing confidentiality concerns, they would not say if psychology professor Kathryn Kelley was suspended by the university or took the leave voluntarily. University spokeswoman Mary Fiess also declined to divulge the reason for the absence, which began Monday.

The UAlbany's Institutional Review Board had previously closed a research project of Kelley's after a student complained about not being able to leave a lecture that was part of her experiment. Federal guidelines strictly prohibit researchers from forcing subjects to engage in their work.

The project, according to a 16-page outline Kelley provided the board, was aimed at exploring the uses of technology for "monitoring and control." In subsequent papers and talks at conferences, Kelley, a professor at the university since 1979, examined the claims of those who said they were implanted with devices that could read their thoughts.

At a summer conference in Orlando, Fla., she described how a subject under anesthesia could be implanted with a device called a "RAAT," short for radio wave, auditory, assaultive, transmitting implants.

"When (short wave) operators transmit to or scan RAAT implants in victims, they can talk to victims remotely and anonymously, and hear the victim's speech and thoughts," Kelley wrote.

On another occasion, she said that the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency funded implant technology aimed at "federal prisoners and political dissidents."

Kelley declined to comment Thursday.

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