Page 36 - 200205 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - May 2002

36 MK Ultra in Canada MK Ultra in Canada 36 PLAYHOUSE OF HORRORS information legislation. of being taught to pick locks, to favourite vegetable. DRAWING: Here, ‘Mary’ withhold information by repeating Canadian and British officials They believe they were young sits in a chair with electrodes attached numbers and to use a spear to attack met members of the CIA at Montreal’s guinea pigs in military mind- to her body. The foot pedals are dolls that resembled children. Mullen Ritz-Carlton hotel in June 1951 to control experiments during the hooked to electrical outlets. A tiny described her role in entrapping discuss possible avenues of research Cold War. The war is long ended, guardian angel, which appears in a prominent men in sexual blackmail into behaviour control in an effort to number of her drawings, flutters schemes at a lodge in Maryland. better understand methods that might but their torment lives on. nearby. Therapist Wolf, born in be applied by totalitarian regimes. Two The documents shed light on Vancouver, lived with her family in years later, the CIA initiated by Jim Bronskill, the CIA’s extensive behaviour control North Bay before moving to Hamilton MKULTRA, a wide-ranging Southam Newspapers projects, including work by McGill {both in Ontario} to attend McMaster exploration of techniques involving University’s Ewen Cameron, who University. She holds a master’s the use of chemical agents to alter When she speaks of the brainwashed patients in Montreal degree in social work and has been a minds in the interest of secret agency Playhouse, Mary describes a chamber using agency funding.But many trauma therapist in Louisiana for the activities. of horrors. She remembers an elevated records had already been destroyed. last 24 years, a track record that has The 1959 publication of the platform with walls, but no ceiling, Still other files remain locked away to helped bolster the claims of her clients novel The Manchurian Candidate by where she served as a child guinea pig. this day. and others who believe they are mind- Richard Condon popularized the Scientists implanted a device through “A person who claims to have control victims. Wolf is used to notion of military-sponsored mind her right nostril, behind the eyeball, been a victim of government mind- hearing disturbing stories, but the tales control. The bestseller, later a movie then suspended her above the control programs is generally not of laboratory horror have taken their starring Frank Sinatra, featured a platform. Surges of electric current going to be believed and is going to be toll. “I have nightmares sometimes,” Communist plot to brainwash a controlled her movements. “It was considered mentally ill,” said Mr. she said in an interview. “I mean, it captured American soldier in horrible because my head was Scheflin. “And, indeed, a lot of people affects me.” Manchuria, programming him to conscious, but they made my body do suffer from the neurotic delusion that Wolf’s clients, including Ms. assassinate the US president. things and I couldn’t stop it,” she says. they were victims of mind control. But Denicola and Ms. Mullen, have Unknown to most North Americans, It was like being a robot.” not all of them are delusional. specific memories of doctors and western researchers were trying to Mary has no official Otherwise, there would be no victims. scientists. They claim to have unlock many of the same secrets. documents to substantiate her stories We know there are victims because we overheard names, caught glimpses of MKULTRA funds were dispensed of the room she says her tormentors know the experiments were done.” documents and remember faces. Many through cover agencies to some of the called the Playhouse. Dates are fuzzy, DRAWING: These images of the men they recall have affiliations period’s leading researchers, including names of towns and buildings drawn by ‘Mary’ recount some of the with the CIA and American military. psychiatrist Ewen Cameron of McGill uncertain. Her childhood is still much experiments she says were carried out Some were involved in the human University’s Allan Memorial Institute like a jigsaw puzzle scattered on a on her as a child. This drawing shows radiation experiments that have now in Montreal. With the help of CIA tabletop. But she has assembled a wire needle she says was inserted been extensively documented by the money from 1957 to 1960, Cameron enough pieces to arrive at her through her nostril. presidential advisory committee. used sensory deprivation, sleep unshakable conclusion that she is a Mary acknowledges her Others took part in CIA funded induction, LSD treatment, intensive victim of Cold War mind-control stories are downright bizarre. She has research into hypnosis, brainwashing electroshock and repetition of taped experiments. frequently doubted her own sanity. But and other mind-controlk programs messages in an effort to treat Mary was born in 1947 in she takes comfort in the fact she is not revealed in the late 1970’s, the best schizophrenia and other disorders by Halifax, shortly after her father left the alone. In March 1995, New Orleans known being MKULTRA. wiping the memory clean and army. She spent most of her early therapist, Valerie Wolf and two clients Wolf now has nine female clients, programming the mind to behave years in southern Ontario, and recalls travelled to Washington to address a ranging in age from 28 to 53, who have differently. being taken from home in cars, small U.S. presidential advisory committee childhood memories of Canada’s health department civilian aircraft and military planes. probing government sponsored experimentation by the military or CIA also helped fund the activities of She believes she was experimented on radiation experiments on people in the in institutional settings. She is struck Cameron, who died in 1966, before at locations in upper New York State decades following the Second World by the similarity of her clients’ stories enormous public controversy erupted and at Canadian Forces Base Uplands War. Wolf told committee members the and their physical ailments, including over his brainwashing work. Debate near Ottawa. Her memories include two women had been subjected as thyroid problems, cysts, brittle teeth, continues today about whether sensory deprivation, experiments, children not only to radiation doses, multiple sclerosis and other muscle Cameron knew of the CIA connection electroshock, drugging, sexual abuse but mind control and pain-induction and connective tissue diseases. In early or was an unwitting collaborator. As and other unspeakable acts. She techniques including electric shock, 1995, when word spread that Ms. Wolf John Marks noted in his book The suspects some of the treatments were use of hallucinogens, sensory would appear in Washington, nearly 40 Search for the Manchurian Candidate, intended to make her forget the deprivation, hypnosis, dislocation of other therapists from around the a former associate said Cameron truly horrors. limbs and sexual abuse. United States contacted her to tell of cared about his patients and felt the In recent years, memories Chris Denicola recounted clients who had reported being used in end justified the means in trying to have come creeping back, piece by being made available at a young age mind-control and radiation make them better. But others feel piece. The identity of Mary, not her by her father for secret government experiments. Ms. Wolf pleaded with nothing justifies what they deem real name, is being withheld to protect procedures in Kansas City and Tucson, the committee to recommend further Cameron’s flagrant violation of ethical the privacy of her parents and siblings. Arizona, intended to turn her into a spy investigation and called for the release standards. A lawsuit resulted, after Family members say she had a normal assassin. She said the experiments of classified documents.”It is lengthy delays, in a CIA settlement upbringing, and that there is no conducted between 1966 and 1976, important that we obtain all of the with nine elderly Canadians in 1988. substance to her claims. have left her with a multiple information contained in CIA and Some 80 people received Dr. Investigating the history of personality disorder. “I believe it is by military files to verify or deny our Cameron’s full “depatterning government-sponsored mind the grace of God that I am still alive,” clients memories.” treatment” at the institute, and the experimentation on people has been Denicola told the committee. “These The post-war years were Canadian government eventually paid largely an exercise in frustration for horrible experiments have profoundly marked by growing western fear of millions of dollars in compensation to those who have delved into the affected my life.” Her marriage has communism as the Soviet Union and survivors. subject. Alleged victims rarely have since broken down and she now goes China flexed their muscles. The CIA documentation to support their claims by the name Chris Ebner. began exploring the use of hypnosis This story will continue in the June and records are extremely difficult to DRAWING: In this drawing, and drugs in the late 1940’s, and the Edition of THE ‘X’ CHRONICLES obtain. ‘Mary’ shows how her shoulders have research intensified in response to NEWSPAPER and we will interview Alan Scheflin, a California been dislocated and her body bound in fears that the emerging Communist two very well known people who law professor and researcher, has been bandages as part of a sensory powers were using brainwashing witnessed and suffered at the hands of pressing the U.S. government since deprivation technique to “break down” techniques or chemical substances to patients of MK Ultra and the CIA. the 1970’s to reveal the full extent of the subject. extract confessions from prisoners. In First we will speak with Dr. Leonard its involvement in mind control. Mr. Claudia Mullen recalled being 1950, the agency began project Horowitz, Public Health Whistle Scheflin, who teaches at Santa Clara abused from 1957 until 1984, a pawn BLUEBIRD, testing various chemical Blower and Rob McConnell, President University, was co-author of a 1978 in the U.S. government’s efforts “to agents, lie detectors and hypnotic and CEO of The ‘X’ Media Group, book based partly on a flurry of create the perfect spy.” Both said they techniques. The project’s name was Radio and Television personality. Both material released the Central were conditioned to carry out later changed to ARTICHOKE, said to Horowitz’s and McConnell’s Mother Intelligence Agency under freedom of clandestine assignments. Denicola told be agency director Allen Dulles’s were part of the Project!