NSA's SWIFT Program Draws on Secret Kellogg's Laboratory Research Tradition

Rare historical photo of the Kellogg fecal analysis laboratory, early 20th century, in Battle Creek, Michigan (from Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine, by Andrew Scull, Yale University Press, 2005,  p. 85, courtesy of Google Books).

In response to our Freedom of Information Act request, the US government has now revealed that the NSA's SWIFT surveillance program (see our previous reports 1 and 2) has been drawing on a long subterranean American tradition of fecal analysis going back to John Harvey Kellogg, the famous inventor of breakfast cereals and avant-garde health reformer of the early 20th century (see above book excerpt). This revelation ranks with the CIA's recent acknowledgement of the existence of Area 51 for U-2 spy plane testing during the 1950s as a revolution in our understanding of conspiratorial Americana.

Kellogg's sanatorium at Battle Creek emphasized a healthy intestinal flora (a subject medical experts have only rediscovered recently with Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), also known as stool transplants), the proper care of which through hydro and yoghurt enemas would lead to a "squeaky-clean intestine."

What was not known until now is that Kellogg's fecal laboratory, inspired by the early work of 18th century neuro-fecal pioneer Jonathan Swift, was also engaged in classified research on fecal thought analysis in cooperation with the American Secret Service. The Secret Service, after failing to prevent the assassinations of presidents Lincoln and McKinley, hoped to be able to detect and preempt future plots against the president on the basis of mass screenings of municipal sewage. However, the primitive state of American waste disposal at the time resulted overwhelmingly in the identification of dray horses as the 'usual suspects.' This brought the Secret Service into conflict with the ASPCA due to their harsh water-boarding interrogation methods, so the project ultimately had to be abandoned.

Early "horseboarding" interrogation techniques rightly outraged Americans' humanitarian instincts, and led to the abandonment of the program.

In returning to this line of research with modern methods, the NSA hopes to overcome these limitations and perfect the surgical identification of fecal plotting signals by separating the wheat from the dray.

Remember: Every bowl of Kellogg's Corn Flakes™ you eat contributes in its own little way to the War on Terror.