There are also rumors about… other stuff.

In the early 2010s there was a guy who would park in downtown San Diego with a van covered in accusations against the US government. He’d stand outside the van with signs and tell anyone who would listen crazy stories about military experiments. I talked to him a few times and he was always going on science ethics, mind control research, and shadow plots to radically change the viewpoint of the American people.

After we talked, I had a good chuckle and assumed he was just a crazy loon.

However, some local journalists thought he seemed a bit too coherent for the far fetched nature of his claims, and spent some time digging into his past. He held a doctorate in mathematics from an ivy-league institution. When they interviewed his grad school advisors, they gushed about how he was the most brilliant student they’d ever had. They were able to confirm that he left academia to take a research position at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), where he held a Top Secret security clearance.

When interviewed, he told journalists that his research at SPAWAR revolved around dolphin consciousness. The military allegedly had him experimenting with mind control on live dolphins in the hopes that it would improve their utility.

He says the guilt over the unethical cetacean experiments drove him to blow the whistle on the program. Nobody believed him, and it devolved into him standing on the street hoping someone with a bit of power would take him seriously enough to bring national attention to the experiments.

Is any of his claims true? No idea. He was probably crazy. However, he has just enough credibility to make you think…. maybe he was trying to blow the whistle on something real.