An influential politician who's actually an enemy mole, turned while a prisoner of war, and now subverting America ... It's the subject of Homeland, the hit cable series. Ironically, the program's second season on Showtime unfolds exactly fifty years after a classic movie first named its theme.
The Manchurian Candidate premiered in October 1962. Since then the specific strain of ideological corruption has mutated, from communism to violent Jihadism, but the public remains fascinated with the concept of brainwashing – of Americans returning from captivity secretly beholden to foreign enemies. Now U.S. government records, many declassified after decades of secrecy, are finally revealing the real story behind the enduring meme.
The records describe Chinese spymasters assigning intelligence and propaganda missions to returning U.S. POWs and sending them home to a Soviet-linked support network of collaborators from Middle America to Eastern Europe.
Told to expect contact once back in America, the men were to “lay low for two or three years,” and “prepare the way in the United States for progressives to come later,” Army intelligence reported. Unlike the enemy's robotic control of The Manchurian Candidate, influence over these real “Candidates” was much closer to the indoctrination and blackmail of Homeland. As to the ultimate effectiveness and extent of the program, much remains unknown. Just last year, the National Archives removed 60-year-old documents on this topic from public view, saying they're still classified or may have “law enforcement sensitivities.” The CIA will not even confirm or deny it has such records. What has been uncovered tells a chilling tale, indicating reality was sometimes more disturbing than fiction. For example, the communists kept certain American prisoners forever to facilitate Soviet espionage and Cold War plotting, according to declassified files.
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