A television programme is out to test whether innocent people can be brainwashed in becoming unwitting assassins as in the plot of political thriller The Manchurian Candidate.

In the 1959 novel, a man is brainwashed into becoming an unwitting sleeper assassin as part of a Communist conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government.

The novel and its film adaptations have intrigued many, and related conspiracy theories have long-held that the U.S. government and others have tried to develop techniques to control the minds of individuals.

In one famous case, the assassin who killed presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy, Christian Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan, later claimed he was hypnotised into carrying out the killing Likewise, Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress kidnapped by the left-wing revolutionary group the Symbionese Liberation Army, claim the gang brainwashed her into taking part in a bank robbery.

There have been government-sponsored studies into the possibility of mind control.Between the Fifties and Seventies, the CIA conducted controversial experiments to develop behavioural engineering that many believed aimed at brainwashing subjects.

Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that Richard Helms, director of the CIA, ordered many files related to the programme – known as MKUltra – destroyed in 1973, years before any investigation into it began.It was nevertheless found that the remit of the project was to develop mind-controlling drugs and techniques, with the CIA especially interested in being able to manipulate foreign leaders.

Now a Discovery Channel documentary aims to see if it is indeed possible to persuade unwitting, law-abiding subjects to become cold-blooded killers who will shoot someone to order,Experimental psychopathologist Cynthia Meyerburg, who oversaw the study, says in a trailer for the documentary: ‘Science has only begun to understand how the brain works, and one of the things we don’t yet understand is whether it’s possible to control someone else’s mind.’

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