It was as early as 1957 that we were first introduced to the power of subliminal programming. In a now infamous experiment, James Vicary, took an unsuspecting cinema audience and fed them subliminal messages on the screen that told them to buy popcorn and coke. Vicary said this lead to an increase in sales. Even though Vicary's experiment was "unsubstantiated", has been refuted by scientists and has never been successfully replicated, it caused a panic in the general public. Due to this study the belief in the power of subliminal messages to affect our behaviour lingers.

William Dawson and other legislators, In Washington D.C., immediately launched a campaign get subliminal messages banned from television and radio broadcasts. Dawson sternly warned that if subliminal messages were used as a political propaganda tool the results could be frightening as they could be used to serve and maintain a form of totalitarian government.

Even though there was no real hard evidence to substantiate any of Dawson's claims the huge and overwhelming public outcry was enough to force the Government into action. At the time, as is still true today, the majority of scientists had well-founded reservations about the effectiveness of subliminal messages; the majority of people in the scientific community hold the belief that they are completely ineffective. Although the Government and the respected scientists of the day did not believe in the effectiveness of subliminal programming and held the view that they were ineffective, the general public were crying out for the banning of them!

This is the official reason behind the USA, British and Australian Governments decision to ban the use of subliminal advertising on television and radio? However, there is evidence to suggest that at around the same time scientists were completely dismissing the idea some other people, with a very different agenda, had found that by using subliminal messages they really could affect people's behaviour!

During the raging debate over the effectiveness of subliminal advertising and the outcry for them to be banned the interest of a very powerful covert group was sparked. A group that did not have to answer to the public and that had immense, almost inexhaustible, resources at their disposal. This group decided, at this time, to start a full investigation. It is well known that The CIA have always had a keen interest in the research of anything that can influence the human mind and their development of mind altering drugs and therapies is well documented. It should be in no way shocked to discover that these same people were willing to use their power and finances to find out if subliminal technologies could be used as a form of control.

In recently released classified documents, now available under The Freedom Of Information Act, we see just how deeply involved and thorough the CIA were in researching the effectiveness of subliminal messages as a means of brain-washing.

Under intense pressure from investigative journalists and Congressional Investigators, the CIA were forced to release a wide variety of documents which included some previous year's copies of their internal journal "Studies in Intelligence". In a 1958 journal CIA investigators reported their initial findings into subliminal persuasion in a report frighteningly titled "The Operational Potential of Subliminal Perception".

In the excellent book by Martin A. Lee, a former agent with the CIA who remains unnamed tells of the CIA's commitment to investigate whether or not subliminal messages could be used to influence the outcome of a political campaign. They were especially interested in using of subliminals in this way on television and radio.

In a January 17th 1958 declassified document, the CIA stated that it might be possible to include a subliminal message such as ‘Obey' in their subliminal projection and added that subliminal messages had achieved some success in commercial advertisements!

No-one can be sure if the CIA ever concluded their investigations into subliminal technology, if it continues to this day or if they found any other startling information that is, as yet, unavailable to us. However, the use of subliminal messages as an effective self-improvement tool cannot be denied and their uses are growing every year. So, there must be something in it.