Edward Hunter (July 2, 1902 – June 24, 1978)[1][2] was an American writer, journalist, propagandist, and intelligence agent who was noted for his anticommunist writing.
[3] Both contemporary psychologists and later historians would criticize the accuracy and basis of his reports on brainwashing, but the concept nevertheless became influential in the Cold War-era United States.
By 1956, US government psychologists largely concluded after examining files of Korean War POWs that brainwashing as described by Hunter did not exist, but the impact of his reporting was significant, and helped shaped public consciousness about the threat of Communism for decades.
[8] Hunter provided testimony to Senator Keating stating that he joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) about the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor and served for the life of the organization.
[13] In this article and in later works, Hunter claimed that by combining Pavlovian theory with modern technology, Russian and Chinese psychologists had developed powerful techniques for manipulating the mind.
[14] A year later, Hunter's magnum opus Brain-Washing in Red China: The Calculated Destruction of Men's Minds was published, warning of a vast Maoist system of ideological "re-education.