Everything about The Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act totally explained
The
Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act of 1956 (
Public Law 84-830) was an
Act of Congress passed to improve
mental health care in the
United States territory of
Alaska. It became the focus of a major political controversy after opponents nicknamed it the "
Siberia Bill" and denounced it as being part of a
communist plot to hospitalize and
brainwash Americans. Campaigners asserted that it was part of an international
Jewish,
Roman Catholic or
psychiatric conspiracy intended to establish
United Nations-run
concentration camps in the United States.
The legislation in its original form was sponsored by the
Democratic Party, but after it ran into opposition it was eventually rescued by the conservative
Republican Senator
Barry Goldwater. Under Goldwater's sponsorship, a version of the legislation without the commitment provisions that were the target of intense opposition from a variety of far-right, anti-Communist and fringe religious groups was passed by the
United States Senate. The controversy still plays a prominent role in the
Church of Scientology's account of its
campaign against psychiatry.
The Act succeeded in its initial aim of establishing a mental health care system for Alaska, funded by income from lands allocated to a mental health trust. However, during the 1970s and early 1980s, Alaskan politicians systematically stripped the trust of its lands, transferring the most valuable land to private individuals and state agencies. The resulting drop in funding led to a severe effect on the provision of mental health care in Alaska. The asset-stripping was eventually ruled to be illegal following several years of litigation, and a reconstituted mental health trust was established in the mid-1980s.
Background to the act
Alaska possessed no mental health treatment facilities prior to the passage of the 1956 Act. At the time of the Act's passage, Alaska wasn't a
U.S. state, being constituted instead as a
territory of the United States. The treatment of the mentally ill was governed by an agreement with the state of
Oregon dating back to the turn of the century. On
June 6 1900, the
United States Congress enacted a law permitting the government of the then
District of Alaska to provide mental health care for Alaskans. In 1904, a contract was signed with the privately-owned Morningside Hospital in
Portland, Oregon, under which Alaskan mental patients would be sent to the hospital for treatment. A commitment regime was established under which a person said to be mentally ill was to be brought before a jury of six people, who would rule him sane or insane. The patient was routinely sent to prison until his release or transfer to Portland; at no point was a medical or psychiatric examination required.
By the 1940s it was recognized that this arrangement was unsatisfactory. The
American Medical Association conducted a series of studies in 1948, followed by a
Department of the Interior study in 1950. They highlighted the deficiencies of the program: commitment procedures in Alaska were archaic, and the long trip to Portland had a negative effect on patients and their families. In addition, an audit of the hospital contract found that the Sanatorium Company, which owned the hospital, had been padding its expenses. This had enabled it to make an excess profit of $69,000 per year (equivalent to over $588,000 per year at 2007 prices).
The bill provided for a cash grant of $12.5 million (about $94 million at 2007 prices) to be disbursed to the Alaskan government in a number of phases, to fund the construction of mental health facilities in the territory. To meet the ongoing costs of the program, the bill transferred one million acres (4,000 km²) of federally-owned land in Alaska to the ownership of the proposed new Alaska Mental Health Trust as a
grant-in-aid—the federal government owned about 99% of the land of Alaska at the time. The trust would then be able to use the assets of the transferred land (principally
mineral and
forestry rights) to obtain an ongoing revenue stream to fund the Alaskan mental health program. Similar provisions had applied in other US territories to support the provision of public facilities prior to the achievement of statehood.
The APRF's membership overlapped with that of the much larger
Minute Women of the U.S.A., a nationwide organization of militant anti-communist housewives which claimed up to 50,000 members across the United States. In mid-January 1956, Minute Woman Leigh F. Burkeland of
Van Nuys, California issued a bulletin protesting against the bill. It was
mimeographed by the California State Chapter of the Minute Women and mailed across the nation. On
January 24 1956, the strongly
libertarian Santa Ana Register newspaper reprinted Burkeland's statement under the headline, "Now — Siberia, U.S.A." Burkeland issued a lurid warning of what the future might hold if the Alaska Mental Health Bill was passed by the Senate:
Fanning the flames
After the
Santa Ana Register published its article, a nationwide network of activists began a vociferous campaign to torpedo the Alaska Mental Health Bill. The campaigners included, among other groups and individuals, the white supremacist Rev.
Gerald L. K. Smith; Women for God and Country; the For America League; the Minute Women of the U.S.A.; the right-wing agitator
Dan Smoot; the anti-Catholic former
US Army Brigadier General
Herbert C. Holdridge; and
L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology, which had been founded only two years earlier.
Increasingly strong statements were made by the bill's opponents through the course of the spring and summer of 1956. In his
February 17 bulletin, Dan Smoot told his subscribers: "I don't doubt that the Alaska Mental Health Act was written by sincere, well-intentioned men. Nonetheless, it fits into a sinister pattern which has been forming ever since the United Nations was organized." Dr. George A. Snyder of
Hollywood sent a letter to all members of Congress in which he demanded an investigation of the Alaska Mental Health Bill's proponents for "elements of treason against the American people behind the front of the mental health program." The Keep America Committee of
Los Angeles similarly called the proponents of the bill a "conspiratorial gang" that ought to be "investigated, impeached, or at least removed from office" for treason. The well-known broadcaster
Fulton Lewis described how he'd "received, literally, hundreds of letters protesting bitterly against the bill. I've had telephone calls to the same effect from California, Texas and other parts of the country. Members of Congress report identical reactions." A letter printed in the
Daily Oklahoman newspaper in May 1956 summed up many of the arguments made by opponents of the bill:
Senate Subcommittee on Territories and Insular Affairs. Proponents and opponents of the bill faced off in a series of tense exchanges, with strong accusations being made against the people and groups involved in the bill's introduction. Stephanie Williams of the American Public Relations Forum said that the bill would enable Russia to reclaim its former Alaskan territory: "[it] contains nothing to prevent Russia from buying the entire million acres — they already say Alaska belongs to them."
Mrs. Ernest W. Howard of the Women's Patriotic Committee on National Defense castigated the slackness of Congress for not picking up on the bill's perceived dangers: "Those of us who have been in the study and research work of the United Nations, we feel that we're experts in this . . . you as Senators with all the many commitments and the many requirements, are not able to go into all these things." John Kaspar, a
White Citizens' Council organizer who had achieved notoriety for starting a race riot in
Clinton, Tennessee, declared that "almost one hundred percent of all psychiatric therapy is Jewish and about eighty percent of psychiatrists are Jewish . . . one particular race is administering this particular thing." He argued that Jews were nationalists of another country who were attempting to "usurp American nationality." An overwhelming majority of Senators of both parties were also supportive. The bill's original author, Alaska Delegate Bob Bartlett, spoke for many of the bill's proponents when he expressed his bafflement at the response that it had received:
I am completely at a loss in attempting to fathom the reasons why certain individuals and certain groups have now started a letter-writing campaign … to defeat the act. I'm sure that if the letter writers would consult the facts, they'd join with all others not only in hoping this act would become law but in working for its speedy passage and approval.
Thus amended, the Senate bill (S. 2973) was passed unanimously by the Senate on
July 20, after only ten minutes of debate. By 1982, had been conveyed to municipalities, transferred to individuals, and slightly over designated as forests, parks or wildlife areas. Around 35 percent of the land trust remained unencumbered and in state ownership.
The loss of the land and the revenue earned from it had a severe effect on mental health care in the state. In 1982, Alaska resident Vern Weiss filed a lawsuit on behalf of his son, who required mental health services that were not available in Alaska. The case of
Weiss v State of Alaska eventually became a
class action lawsuit involving a range of mental health care groups. The
Alaska Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that the abolition of the trust had been illegal and ordered it to be reconstituted. However, as much of the original land had been transferred away, the parties had to undergo a long and complex series of negotiations to resolve the situation. A final settlement was reached in 1994 in which the Trust was reconstituted with of original Trust land, of replacement land, and $200 million to replace lost income and assets. which "presumably ... was far enough away from the well-traveled roads of the world to allow psychiatrists to conduct their mind control and other experiments on a captive population, unhindered by the glare of publicity." It would give psychiatrists the power to ensure that "Any man, woman or child could be seized and sent without trial to Alaska, deprived of human and civil rights and detained forever, all without trial or examination." According to the Church's
Freedom Magazine:
Dianetics and Scientology organizations ... when the Church of Scientology actively opposed a bill whose introduction in Congress had been secure by the APA. ... The APA was well aware of who was behind the massive response that defeated the legislation, and they never forgot, as can be seen from some of the attacks its members generated."
Miscavige on Nightline
Similarly,
David Miscavige, the Church's leader, in 1992 told
Ted Koppel in an interview on the
Nightline program:
the war was on with psychiatry where they declared war on us …
It was a major, major, major flap for the psychiatrists when it got voted down, because then the slogan around the country began, 'Siberia U.S.A.,' and it was really the first time that psychiatry had been denigrated publicly, that they weren't the science that they'd been promoting themselves to be. And they took it upon themselves then to start dealing with anybody who would oppose them.}}
Conspiracy theories
In
Ron's Journal 67, Hubbard said that the people behind the bill were "less than twelve men. They are members of the
Bank of England and other higher financial circles. They own and control newspaper chains, and they are, oddly enough, directors in all the mental health groups in the world which have sprung up."
According to David Miscavige, the bill was the product of a conspiracy by the American Psychiatric Association. In a public address in 1995, he told Scientologists that it was "in 1955 that the agents for the American Psychiatric Association met on Capitol Hill to ram home the infamous Siberia Bill, calling for a secret concentration camp in the wastes of Alaska." It was "here that Mr. Hubbard, as the leader of a new and dynamic religious movement, knocked that Siberia Bill right out of the ring — inflicting a blow they'd never forget." The assertion that Scientologists defeated the bill is made frequently in Scientology literature. In fact, the original version of the bill with the offending Title I commitment provisions only passed the House of Representatives; it was subsequently amended in conference to strike the commitment portion and retain the transfer of responsibility for mental health care. The revised bill passed easily without further changes.
Although the Church says that Scientologists led the opposition to the bill, the
Congressional Record's account of the Senate hearings into the bill doesn't mention the Church. A contemporary review of the opposition to the bill likewise attributes the lead role elsewhere and to right-wing groups, rather than the "civil liberties" organizations cited by the Church:
Only a few organized groups got behind the hue and cry. Most influential was the libertarian Association of Physicians and Surgeons, and Dan Smoot's newsletter. Right-wing groups bombarded Congress with protests and demands for hearings.
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