Edward Hunter

Edward Hunter was a CIA propaganda operator who worked under cover as a journalist. In September 1950, the Miami News published his article titled "'Brain-Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party," the first printed use in any language of the term "Brainwashing." Hunter made up the word from the Chinese hsi-nao, meaning "to cleanse the mind," which had no political meaning in Chinese. The term quickly became a stock phrase in Cold War headlines. Hunter turned out a steady stream of books and articles on the subject, including Brainwashing in Red China, published in 1951.¹

Promoting the Brainwashing Threat

American public opinion reacted strongly to Hunter's ideas, partly because of the hostility toward communist foes whose ways were perceived as mysterious and alien. Most Americans knew about the trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, at which the Cardinal appeared zombielike, and other defendants at Soviet show trials had displayed similar symptoms. The brainwashing controversy intensified during the Korean War, when captured U.S. pilots "confessed" to war crimes including germ warfare. Hunter saw the confessions as proof that the communists had techniques "to put a man's mind into a fog so that he will mistake what is true for what is untrue, what is right for what is wrong, and come to believe what did not happen actually had happened, until he ultimately becomes a robot for the Communist manipulator."¹

Conflict with the Wolff-Hinkle Study

Hunter's views put him at odds with the official Brainwashing study conducted by Harold Wolff and Lawrence Hinkle for the CIA. Their report stated flatly that neither the Soviets nor the Chinese had any magical weapons, no drugs or exotic machines. Instead, communist methods rested on the skillful, if brutal, application of police methods. This thesis earned Wolff and Hinkle the enmity of right-wing CIA officials like Hunter. Several of his former acquaintances remember that Hunter was fond of saying that the Soviets brainwashed people the way Pavlov had conditioned dogs.¹

Hunter died in June 1978.¹