At sixteen she entered and won the 1941 Miss Atlantic City contest, which led to a job as official hostess at the Miss America pageant, and lots of publicity. She subsequently became Candy Jones, America's most famous model during the forties, and in 1944/45 toured with the United Service Organizations (USO) in the South Pacific, with a show specifically designed for her. In April 1945, in Morotai, she became ill with undulant fever and malaria, and was put in a special hospital in the Philippines, where she subsequently developed a contagious fungus.  Here she became friends with a number of medics including an officer whose name Donald Bain doesn't reveal in his book based on Long John Nebel's hypnosis tapes The Control of Candy Jones (see Sources below) but gives the pseudonym  'Gilbert Jenson'. Within six weeks she was feeling well enough to travel. 

Marriage and the FBI

In 1946 Candy married Harry Conover, creator of the 'cover girl' concept. But the marriage was not a happy one and they divorced in 1959. After the divorce, which left Candy in heavy debt, she had her own modeling school. It was at this time that she met a retired army general she knew from South Pacific, and within a few days of this was approached by an FBI man who borrowed a sophisticated microphone from her. A month later the same man returned with two others and asked to use her  office as a mail drop for the government. Thinking it the patriotic thing to do she agreed, but little did she know that this was the beginning of something much bigger, and much more sinister, than she could ever imagine.

In the sixties Candy worked for NBC radio, and maintained her close association with influential people in show business, politics and the military establishment, many of whom she'd met while touring with the USO in the mid forties.

Long John Nebel & Hypnosis

In December 1972, at the age of 47, Candy married Long John Nebel, New York's most successful and controversial radio talk-show host. They had dated for only 28 days, though they had known each since 1941.  

Almost immediately Nebel noticed something strange about his new wife. She sometimes spoke in an odd, aggressive voice and  showed sharp mood swings.She was also suffering from insomnia, so in June 1973, Nebel offered to try and hypnotise her to cure it. Candy maintained that she couldn't be hypnotised, and although Nebel had never done it before, he was convinced his extensive reading on the subject would see him through. It seems that she made a highly suggestible subject, almost uniquely so, though perhaps this was helped by her great faith in her husband. Whatever the reason she had her first proper night's sleep for months as a result of Nebel's hypnosis. At subsequent sessions she began to spontaneously age regress and talked in a child's voice. But it was the other, non-childhood, regressions that worried Nebel and prompted him to buy a tape recorder to keep a record of these disturbing conversations under hypnosis. If only he could have used security cameras to film the sessions it would have helped in his analysis of Candy's radical personality changes. Later in June the personality of Candy's childhood playmate, Arlene Grant, with her deep severe tones appeared, and through hypnotic regression, a sinister tale of hypnosis and mind control in Candy's past emerged.

Hypnosis and Mind Control

What she detailed in these hypnotic sessions began during the time that her office was being used as a mail drop for a government agency. Apparently she was asked to carry a letter for the CIA to a man in San Francisco. This man was Gilbert Jensen, whom she remembered as the medic from the Philippines. Jensen then asked her to go to his office in Oakland to discuss the letter and other interesting and lucrative work she could do for the CIA. He told her that she would carry messages now and then for them, and said she needed a passport under an assumed name, as she would sometimes have to travel abroad. The name she chose was Arlene Grant. 

So far, none of what Candy was doing was particularly unusual during the Cold War, in fact she joined thousands of Americans who worked for innumerable units like the one headed by Jensen, established and ran by the CIA. Like other citizens working part-time for the 'The Company', as the CIA was known, her part would be kept secret, so secret that even the records branch at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, knew nothing of her.  Jensen, her 'control agent', would be her only contact.

Jensen told her that she would need to be in good health for her undercover work and suggested she needed vitamins, which he injected into her intravenously from then on. These 'vitamins' were actually highly experimental drugs. He also told her about hypnosis and its uses, demonstrating it by hypnotising her, although she insisted she couldn't be hypnotised. It was then that he found Arlene, and developed her into someone he could use. Arlene was brought out and took Candy over, and in reality it was her who was sent on various experimental missions at home and abroad. Candy would become Arlene in appearance too, wearing a wig and different make-up. Of course she was programmed not to remember all this, but when Donald Bain talked to her for his book she still had one of the passport photos of her as Arlene ( which Bain published), wearing a black wig and dark make-up.

CIA training camps

She attended training camps, military bases and secret medical facilities throughout America. She was trained to use explosives, to fight in close combat with improvised weaponry such as a hatpin, and taught about disguise and communications. As 'Arlene' she learned how to kill with her bare hands, resist pain, and deal with interrogation techniques. She carried and was taught to use a .22-caliber pistol, and was introduced to such devices as a lipstick containing poison, which could be used to commit suicide, if captured, by biting into the stick. She also learned how code numbers could be painted on her nails and covered with nail polish. All Candy Jones knew about all this was that she had occasionally delivered mail for her government. She was not aware of her alter ego Arlene at all, though Arlene knew all about her, and thought her weak.

There is a distinct possibility that Jensen's mind control experiments were designed to discover what could be done with this 'perfect spy', and that the messages that Candy delivered were only of minor importance. It was the method that was the essential thing. There is also no way of knowing where the CIA's involvement with her ended, and Jensen and his own ideas for the project (or himself),  took over.  There is some evidence outside that from hypnotic regression for this strange tale. Candy told her editor at Harper and Row, Joe Vergara (whom Bain interviewed),  that she sometimes worked for a government agency as a courier and might disappear occasionally. She also mentioned that she would travelling to Asia. There was also a letter she wrote to her attorney, William Williams, to cover herself in case she died or disappeared suddenly or under unusual circumstances; she told him she was not at liberty to reveal exactly what she was involved in. Bain wrote to Williams who corroborated this fact. So, clearly, Candy was involved in something she was not at liberty to discuss, even with the people close to her. Such a request for any legal professional, whether a criminal defence attorney or a personal/business attorney, is unusual and provides good evidence that Candy was involved with a covert government agency.

Copyright 2002 by Brian Haughton. All Rights Reserved.
 

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